


X

by caimani



Category: Waterparks (Band)
Genre: Awsten Knight and Kyle Fletchers are Twins, Friends to Lovers, Haunted Houses, I just realized this might be a bit of a slow burn but not slow enough to tag it slow burn, Kyle Fletchers, M/M, Paranormal Investigators, Spooky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2019-12-27 03:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18296264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caimani/pseuds/caimani
Summary: Awsten believes in the paranormal. Jawn does not. Welcome to their YouTube channel.





	1. The Miller Farmhouse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keithundead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithundead/gifts).



> ok be warned, there's mentions of violence and death and slightly spooky horror stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awsten and Jawn investigate the Miller Farmhouse and try to reach out to the spirits who might still live there.

“Okay, we’re recording,” Awsten says, glancing back at his phone screen once more to double-check before looking up at Jawn.

Jawn has his own phone held in front of him, pointed at Awsten. “Yeah, I’m recording too,” he says. “So, what are we doing? For the audience.”

“Hey, what’s up, YouTube,” Awsten says. “We’ve got a night out with the dark mysteries in the world. I’m Awsten and this is Jawn, and we’re about to check out the old Miller Farm.”

“Which _he_ thinks is haunted,” Jawn says under his breath.

“Hey, shut up!” Awsten says, lowering his camera for a moment. “We’re gonna have to cut that out of the video now!”

“I mean, we’re going to have to explain our positions on this sometime. Might as well get it out early on,” Jawn says. He sticks his free hand in his hoodie pocket and raises an eyebrow at Awsten. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got everything planned,” Awsten huffs. “Just. Let’s move on. Okay, follow me, Jawn.” He turns back towards the dilapidated two-story farmhouse looming in front of them. It’s just a local place— a thirty minute drive from Otto’s house— but it’s notorious. His heart pounds in his chest as he walks closer and closer to the door. All around them, the thick overgrown grasses and weeds sway in the chilly autumn breeze. The sun is close to setting behind the house, making it look even more eerie.

It’s cool, but then Awsten remembers they’re going to go inside that place. When it’s dark, no less.

Awsten pans upwards with the phone camera. “The Miller Farm was built in the 1850s,” he starts. “And it’s had a creepy history ever since. For starters, the Miller family, who owned the farm until it they abandoned it in the 1970s, was never able to keep hired workers because of accidents that happened to them on the farm.”

“Wait, really?” Jawn interrupts. “I thought it was just a creepy old— Where did you find this out?”

“Research,” Awsten says. “It’s in newspapers and stuff at the library.”

Jawn scoffs. “You actually do _research_? At the _library_?”

Awsten sticks his tongue out at him. They’ve reached the house, and they both stop walking again. “The earliest things I could find were just of the workers being fed up with the unfair wages for their hours of work. Even for the time, it was shitty. But as time went by, it escalated to things like these people getting hurt by faulty equipment, almost drowning in the Millers’ pond, falling from the loft in the barn, getting attacked by the Millers’ dogs, stuff like that. Eventually the Miller Farm got a reputation for abusing its workers, even though it seems like there was plenty of evidence of them being great members of the town.”

“People can pretend to be nice and actually be total assholes,” Jawn says. 

“Yeah,” Awsten says. 

“By the way, are we gonna go in, or are we just gonna be talking out here?” Jawn asks. Awsten notices him shivering, but another look at the door gives him cold feet. 

“Uh,” Awsten says. He adjusts his grip on the phone. “Let’s walk around the place while we finish the history of this place.”

He’s never actually been this close to the Miller farmhouse before. He’s seen it from the road, of course. And once on Halloween (when he was ten years old), Otto tried to dare him to go and touch the door, but he chickened out halfway there.

Now he’s seeing the full size and state of decay of the exterior of the house. All of the windows are shattered, the paint has mostly all peeled away, and a shed against the side has completely fallen apart. The roof is partially caved in on one side, and a huge skeletal tree on the other side might be the only thing that’s kept this place from burning down due to a lightning strike. It’s super creepy, but knowing the history makes him even more nervous.

“So the Miller family just ran their farm as a family farm for a while,” Awsten says. “And the accidents stopped. Or if they kept happening, nobody in the family reported it. But then, one of the people who married into the family turned up dead.”

“What?” Jawn shouts, turning to look at Awsten in shock. “Are you serious?”

Awsten nods. “Yeah. Like, this woman who married one of the Miller sons and had kids and everything. Weirdly enough, nothing really happened after that.”

“You mean they didn’t investigate it?” Jawn says. 

“As far as I could find out, no,” Awsten says. “Or if they did, there’s no surviving records of it. This was back in, like, the 1880s, so who knows. So fast-forward a couple decades of a couple more hired workers having accidents and quitting. 1901: it happens again. A guy who married into the family and worked on the farm for years turned up dead. Except this time, someone had something to say about it.”

They’re at the back of the house now, and Awsten’s stomach drops at the sight of a small family cemetery in the distance, surrounded by a low stone wall. 

Jawn looks to Awsten. “You wanna head to the cemetery to finish this?”

Awsten really doesn’t want to. “No, there’s not much more to tell. Well, the history anyway. I’ve got some theories as to why this is happening—”

“Theories?” Jawn repeats. “You mean like, who’s abusing the farm workers and killing people? It’s the family, right?”

“No, it’s not,” Awsten says. “That’s what came out in 1901. This guy who married one of the Millers, he brought his sister along to live there— here— too. After his death, she came out and told the town— or at least the paper— what happened. Apparently, the family was completely nice, completely normal. But these weird things would happen when the family wasn’t around, and only to her and her brother. The two who weren’t Millers by birth.”

“What, when they weren’t around?” Jawn says. He stops and tilts his head. 

“She said there was like this evil presence, something that only came out to harass them when they were alone,” Awsten explains.

Jawn sighs loudly. “Please don’t say what I’m thinking you’re going to say.”

“So what she said at the time, and what I think— based on one more instance of a non-Miller person getting seriously hurt in the 1930s before almost the whole family moved out— is it’s like, one of the original Millers haunting the place. Someone who got mad seeing other people in their home.”

Jawn rolls his eyes. “Okay, bypassing the fact that ghosts aren’t real—”

“You can’t say that, with all the compelling evidence people have documented—”

“Wouldn’t there _have_ to be other people in the farmhouse, eventually?” Jawn continues. “I mean, unless this dead Miller dude was into incest?”

“Ew, gross!” Awsten says. “Dude, I don’t know! I’m just saying the most likely theory!”

“No, the most likely theory is that they were just shitty people who hurt people,” Jawn says. 

They stop back in front of the main entrance to the farmhouse. Now that he’s recited the history, Awsten is feeling sick to his stomach. He checks the battery on his phone— still good— and then looks back to Jawn.

“Well, you can believe what you want to believe,” he says. “I’m here to see if we can catch this ghost on camera. Or maybe like, call out to the spirits of the people who died. Something’s gotta happen.”

“Cool,” Jawn says. “I, uh, I guess I’m here to see if ghosts are real? Spoiler: they’re not.” He laughs and Awsten kind of wants to kick him. “Then I guess I’m here to check out the inside of this piece of shit house. Hopefully it’s not going to collapse in on us.”

“It’s not,” Awsten says. “People have been in here before and it’s been fine.”

“Have you?” Jawn says.

“No!” Awsten says. “Not yet, anyway. But, uh, I think Otto has. Wait, no, he said he hasn’t. Um… well, I know other people come in here.” 

“Okay, if we die falling through the rotten wood, it’s your fault,” Jawn says with a chuckle.

Jawn reaches out and pulls the door open. Awsten jumps at the movement— and the loud creak it makes as it opens. Jawn gives him a teasing look and Awsten shoves past him into the darkness within.

They have to stop recording for a moment to get the flashlights out of Jawn’s backpack, but they start up again quickly. Awsten shines the flashlight all around the space they’re in. It’s a narrow entrance hallway that leads all the way to the back door of the house. There are two other doors, one on either side, and a stairwell on the left that stops at a landing above the back door before continuing up to the second floor. There are broken pieces of wood and clutter from outside strewn across the floor. Awsten struggles to keep his nerves under control.

“Wow, this place is even shittier on the inside,” Jawn says, his voice echoing loudly in the quiet, empty hall. Behind them, the front door closes abruptly with a solid thud.

“FUCK!” Awsten yells, whirling around. What the fuck, he didn’t hear it creak at all. Even worse, someone spray painted a creepy skull on the back of the door.

“Calm down, it’s just the wind,” Jawn says. 

“That’s the fucking oldest bullshit excuse—” 

“It’s a windy day, and it’s a fucking old door.” Jawn shrugs. “Oh, or maybe it’s the ghost of Old Man Miller locking us in here so he can kill us.” He finds the skull with his flashlight. “That’s him.”

“Shut up,” Awsten says, suppressing a shudder. He turns his flashlight and phone back towards the empty hall, half expecting to see something new and horrible. But there’s nothing except the dirty debris-strewn hall he just turned his back on.

He walks down the hall slowly. He reaches the first door— the one on the right— and pushes it open. 

It’s…

Well, he should have probably expected this.

It’s just a filthy abandoned room, full of old broken stuff and cigarettes butts and trash and graffiti. Awsten moves his flashlight around the whole room, but there’s nothing interesting here. He can’t even tell if any of this broken stuff was original furniture. 

“Hey look,” Jawn says, pointing his flashlight at the wall. “That says ‘YOUR GAY’. You think the ghost wrote this, Awsten? How’d they know?”

“Come on, let's go to the next room,” Awsten says. He picks his way back to the open door and crosses the creepy hall to the next door. However, he freezes when he feels a cold sensation on his hand, inches from the doorknob. 

Awsten would assume it’s another breeze but… it doesn’t feel like the wind. His whole body feels cold, even under all his layers of clothes. His skin crawls with goosebumps. His voice freezes in his throat as he opens his mouth to try to say something to Jawn.

Jawn drops his hand on Awsten's shoulder, making him jump. 

“Awsten?”

“Yeah,” Awsten says. He grabs the doorknob, which is so freezing cold that he expects his skin to stick to it. He pulls his sleeve down enough to grab the knob through the fabric, which is a little better. “Fuck, that's really cold.”

“What is?” Jawn says. “The house? It feels a lot nicer than outside, to me.”

“No, I just felt...” Awsten starts, but clams up. No, whenever people in these videos say they feel cold spots, nobody believes them. Honestly, hearing that in videos has never sold it for Awsten in the past. It's pretty fucking spooky to him right now though. There’s gotta be _something_ here that’s causing that. Hopefully he’ll catch it on camera.

“Nothing,” he says in a mumble. 

“Yep, that's what this place is full of!” Jawn says, leading the way across the entrance hall into the next room. “Nothing! Well, nothing but old gross crap and graffiti. And spiders, probably.”

“Ugh,” Awsten says, keeping away from the wall in this next room. It's the remains of a kitchen and dining room, with a large table in pieces and a huge old fireplace at the other end. Jawn heads straight for the fireplace and looks up, pointing his flashlight and phone into the fireplace. 

“Oh my god!” Jawn yells.

“What?” Awsten says, hurrying over to look up as well.

“There’s no ghosts up the chimney,” Jawn says sarcastically. As he says it, the light from the flashlights catch a spider crawling up the side of the brick and the both jump back. Jawn laughs. “Guess we can count out the evil ghost of Santa, then.” 

“You fucking asshole,” Awsten says, shoving at him. He stomps away from Jawn and stops recording again. Good thing there’s nothing worth filming in this room. “I’m gonna have to cut out so much out of this video… fuck. Can you at least try to take this seriously? You promised you would.”

Jawn walks away from the fireplace. “Okay, yeah, sorry.”

Awsten rubs at his eyes. “Just… until it gets dark, okay? We stay until it’s dark, and if nothing happens, we’ll leave.”

Jawn nods. “Sounds good.”

Awsten turns to go back into the hallway when that cold presence returns again, even stronger than before. He grits his teeth, hoping that it’s just the wind like Jawn claims and not—

He feels a puff of freezing cold air on his neck.

“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” Awsten yells, bolting through the door and running for the stairs up. He nearly trips on the narrow steps and actually does stumble to the floor once he’s on the second floor hallway. The floorboard he lands on is soft— too soft— and collapses under the sudden weight.

“NO!” Awsten screams as he feels his knee pass through the rotten wood. 

 

Thankfully his fall is stopped by the boards underneath. They don’t feel very secure, but they’re enough to catch him before he falls ten feet to the floor below. He quickly pulls himself out of the hole and onto more stable floor. He fights to breathe as his heart races. The flashlight is shaking in his grip, illuminating another creepy wall across from him, one that’s mostly free of graffiti.

“Awsten, are you okay?” Jawn says, sounding alarmed as he runs up the stairs after him.

“Careful,” Awsten chokes out. “The floor’s bad—”

Jawn stops at the top of the stairs and carefully maneuvers around the hole in the floor. “Shit, man,” he says. “Forget ghosts, you’re gonna die of fucking tetanus.”

Awsten’s heart leaps again and his hands go to his leg to feel around for splinters. “No…” he says as he confirms he’s okay. “I didn’t— I just broke through it. I’m—” He almost says ‘I’m fine’ but he’s definitely not fine. He looks back at the hole in the floor and inches farther away from it.

Jawn crouches down next to him, pointing his phone towards him. “You gonna want to keep this part in the video?”

Awsten stands up and takes out his own phone to start his recording again. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out later. Let’s just… I want to get this over with.” The cold spots are freaking him out. Along with that… whatever that was downstairs. His breathing stops for a moment as he wonders— was that the ghost?

Did Jawn catch it on his recording?

“Weren’t we also going to call out to the ghosts?” Jawn says. He takes slow and careful steps down the hallway. “Hey, Old Ghost-Man Miller—”

“You have no idea if it’s a guy ghost,” Awsten points out.

“Why’d you kill all your family?” Jawn continues. “I mean, I don’t think you did, cause I don’t think you’re real. But hey, now’s your chance to prove me wrong.”

Awsten’s eyes widen. “What.”

Jawn kicks the door to his right and it opens with a groan. “Come on out! Show yourself! Push me down the stairs! Throw me out a window! Awsten, what happened to the Millers who died?”

“Jawn, are you _insane_?” Awsten says, getting to his feet and rushing after Jawn. “You can’t just taunt a ghost like that! It’s gonna kill you!”

“Let’s see it try,” Jawn says with a laugh.

Awsten gapes at him in shock. “I can’t— why did I fucking bring you here? Oh my god, I’m gonna die.”

Jawn points his flashlight around the upstairs room. There are three stripped box spring mattresses in a freakishly neat stack in one corner and so much dirty clutter across the floor that it makes Awsten a bit anxious to go poking around through it all. Falling through the floor was one thing; he really doesn’t want to touch this shit. It’s probably full of spiders and, like, asbestos. 

“Hey! Ghosts!” Jawn says loudly. “Where are you!”

Awsten feels a cold breeze again, and hears a faint whining howl. He jumps, but it really does just sound like wind this time. He points his flashlight and camera at one of the broken windows. 

Outside, the sun is close to reaching the treeline. Awsten walks around the piles of garbage and leaf clutter on the floor— stopping for a second when the floor creaks loudly under his foot— and looks out of the window. 

The window is facing the rear of the house, overlooking what must have been fields once. Now it’s just a vast expanse of dead grass and weeds. And of course, the family cemetery, far away. Awsten tries zooming in on that, but his phone camera won’t focus. He gives up after a few failed attempts.

“Well, Awsten,” Jawn says from the other side of the room. “No reply from your ghosts.”

“We should check the room across the hall before we leave,” Awsten says.

Jawn gives him a look. “You really want to? You look kind of freaked out.”

Awsten sets his face in a determined glare. “I’m fine! And you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be, like, freaked out, if you fell through a rotting floor.”

He walks past Jawn into the hallway, and heads towards the last door of the farmhouse. He reaches towards it and—

An intensely cold breath of air that sounds like a fucking exhale creeps across the back of his neck, accompanied by the distinct sensation of icy cold fingers on the back of his hand. 

Awsten yells out in terror and turns and runs for the stairs again. Halfway down the hall, his foot falls through another weak spot on the floor and he starts falling, full force, towards the crumbling hole he left earlier. Still gripping the flashlight and phone, he throws his arms out in front of him to catch himself.

Two hands— warm hands that definitely belong to a person— grab him before his face makes impact with the floor. Jawn pulls him back upright.

“What was that?” Jawn says, looking concerned. “Awsten?”

“You gotta— you heard that, right? That…” Awsten glances back at the door, pointing his flashlight at it, but there’s nothing there. No shadow, no mysterious vapor, no translucent figure, nothing. 

“There was... I heard something. Someone was… breathing on me.”

Jawn picks his flashlight off the floor and points it back towards the door as well. He frowns and starts walking towards it.

“Wait,” Awsten says, but Jawn pushes the door open anyway and goes into the room. Awsten follows, with his phone still recording. 

The last room is full of even more clutter and things left over from the original inhabitants— a broken shelf, some chairs missing all their legs, two more stripped box spring mattresses— but the rest of it a similar scene to the rest of the house. And it's empty.

“Nobody's here but us,” Jawn says. “It was probably the wind. It sounds like a voice sometimes.”

Awsten looks around the room, both hoping and dreading to find some trace of evil. Like an inverted photograph of the family or a pentagram or something. But apart from some interesting and creative graffiti designs, there's nothing. 

“Any ghosts here?” Awsten calls out, summoning up his last shred of bravery. “I'm Awsten and this is my friend Jawn. We're, uh, sorry to disturb your rest. But we just want to know about what happened here.”

“Tell us,” Jawn says. “I'll believe in ghosts if you come out and show yourselves in front of us.”

“And, um, if you hate us and want us to leave, just give some kind of sign—”

At that moment, a loud noise like something splitting in two echoes through the house. Awsten jumps and almost drops the phone. The noise is immediately followed by a crash that shakes the entire house. The far wall of the room groans loudly and both Awsten and Jawn sprint for the door. They run across the hall, avoiding the holes, down the stairs, through the downstairs hallway.

Awsten's hands are shaking too badly to open the door, so Jawn reaches past him to open it for him.

They run until Awsten thinks they’re a safe distance from the house and then he stops to turn around to look.

The large tree that had stood next to house had split down the middle, one half crashing into the side of the house. The side that they had been in. In fact, the half of the tree is leaned almost entirely on the edge of roof directly above that upstairs room. 

Awsten's heart is racing.

“Shit, that was close,” Jawn says. 

Panting, Awsten looks down at his phone.

It's not recording.

“Fuck!” he yells. A glance at Jawn confirms that he doesn't even have his phone out. Awsten quickly starts his recording again.

“Okay,” Awsten says. “I'm not sure when I stopped recording because we literally just ran the fuck out of there, but that tree,” he stops talking to zoom in on the split, “Broke and fell against the house while we were in that room,” he moves the focus to the broken window of the upstairs room, “And it—”

There's a loud groaning noise as the half of the tree that broke snaps the rest of the way and falls to the ground with a mighty crash. It’s silent afterwards, both Awsten and Jawn staring in shock.

“That's impressive,” Jawn finally says. 

“So,” Awsten laughs nervously. “Yeah. Fuck that place. I'm never coming anywhere near this haunted piece of shit ever again.” He stops the recording and puts his overheating phone back in his pocket.

“It's not haunted,” Jawn says, following after Awsten as they start the walk back to where they parked Jawn's car. “It's just old and falling apart.”

“That shit is haunted,” Awsten shoots back.

Jawn laughs. “Yeah, whatever. Not convinced. We doing another place next weekend?”

~~~~

_Geoff Games: cool! :)_

_Travis Riddle: I can't believe you didn't get eaten by a ghost…. I'm suing._

_yellowroses: @awsten &jawn do you see that thing moving in the cemetery at the beginning? also, glad you didnt fall through the floor!!_

_richman6969: @yellowroses yeah thats slenderman ha ha this is bs_

_mario63: you need a better camera but good job anyway_


	2. Sandstone Gorge Railroad Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awsten and Jawn investigate the Sandstone Gorge Railroad Bridge and try to figure out if the supernatural has any presence in its creepy history.

“Alright, what are we doing today?” Jawn says, pointing his phone at Awsten. Awsten grins. This dramatic reveal is going to look so cool when they edit it later. He might even put in some sound effects, to build up suspense.

Maybe he should put together some kind of intro for their videos. Their first video on the channel didn’t get as big of a response as Awsten had been hoping, but he knows that with consistently good videos, they’ll draw a bigger audience.

That’s the reason why he’s also got some really good haunted locations planned. They’re going to scare the shit out of him, but it’ll be worth it. They’ve got to catch _something_ on film sooner or later. 

“Turn around and you’ll see,” Awsten says in response to Jawn’s leading question. 

Jawn turns around slowly to face the old railroad bridge in the distance. Gradually, he pans the camera from the far left to the far right, taking in the size of it. The bridge is almost a quarter of a mile long, crossing a deep gorge below. As it’s laid out, it curves to the right, and Awsten and Jawn are in the perfect position to take in the sight of it. Even though they’re on the same level as the tracks, the sheer size and length of the bridge is terrifying.

The old rails aren’t far from where they’ve parked. A trail nearby leads down into the gorge, and there are high wire fences just beyond that blocking off the actual rails. For safety, so a nearby sign declares.

“Today we’re investigating the Sandstone Gorge Railroad Bridge,” Awsten says. “This one’s _really_ creepy—”

“Because it’s got snakes somewhere down there instead of fake ghosts?” Jawn asks.

“There’s that,” Awsten says, shooting a glare at him. “But the history is freaky too. It was built during, you know, that time of westward expansion in history. Eighteen-hundreds. Before the construction, there used to be a river that went through the gorge below, but it dried up as soon as the bridge was built. Legend says there’s some kind of curse that’s—”

“A legend?” Jawn groans.

“Shut up, Jawn,” Awsten says. “Yeah, _a legend_ , because this bridge doesn’t really have much in the way of, like, actual written-down history.”

“People can say anything, you know.”

“And I only looked up the stuff that seemed legit,” Awsten protests. Honestly, he’s not a beginner at this investigation stuff. 

Jawn’s looking at him like he _is_ an amateur though. “Like legends?” he prompts.

Asshole. “Hey, if you _listen_ ,” Awsten says. “You’ll find out why that curse stuff is probable. At least why people attribute it as the cause of the shit that goes down here.” 

Jawn rolls his eyes. “Yeah, alright. I’ll listen. Are we actually going on the bridge, or—”

“No,” Awsten says quickly. He rubs his suddenly-sweaty hands on the sides of his pants. “Um. We can go close to it, but I don’t trust that fucking thing.” He shudders, remembering the feeling of falling through the floorboards at the Miller Farm. It’s not an experience he wants to repeat, especially not on a weather-worn wooden bridge towering sixty feet off the ground.

“Alright,” Jawn says with a shrug. He starts walking towards the fence, and Awsten follows.

“The legend about the curse was sort of made up to explain all the weird things that happened here,” Awsten says. “The river drying up and never coming back is one thing. But people who lived around here also had a lot of other stories. It’s mostly all train-related shit. Like, there’s at least three different accounts of trains breaking down or stopping without warning while on the bridge. And people on those trains would talk about hearing things and seeing things while crossing over the gorge.”

“Like what?” Jawn says. He’s reached the fence. Awsten stoops down to pull the bottom of it up. Jawn crawls underneath first, taking care with the phone. Awsten then climbs over the top of it, dropping to the ground beside Jawn.

“Well, there’s a lot of stories about the train people dealing with fog at night,” Awsten says, shaking the dust off his clothes. “Even though there’s no water near here anymore. And train operators would hear people talking in the fog. There’s a bunch of stories of how it would look like there were people standing on the bridge but they would disappear when it looked like the trains were about to hit them.”

“Sounds fake,” Jawn says. He quickly adds, “I mean, it sounds cool, but it’s just really fake. It’d make a hilarious horror movie.”

Awsten scoffs, but he’s feeling less stressed as he walks along the tracks with Jawn towards the bridge. “Yeah. Like I said, there are a lot of other stories people probably made up. But the fog still happens. There’s videos— I’ve seen them.”

Jawn gives Awsten a skeptical look. “Really?”

“Yeah!” Awsten says.

“Does it only happen at night?”

Awsten blinks. “Yes?”

Jawn looks out at the sun, which is still fairly high in the sky. “Are we going to stay out here until it gets dark?”

“I don’t want to,” Awsten admits. Just going near the bridge is going to be enough. And walking underneath it, on the trail. 

Jawn slows down so he can walk side by side with Awsten. He nudges him with a smirk. “You scared of what might crawl out of the fake ghost fog? Ghost snakes? Or is it just ghost people? Ghost trains?”

“I’m just going to cut all of that out,” Awsten says. 

Jawns laughs. “No you’re not. Awsten, do the ghosts do anything else? Do they try to push you off the bridge? Do they make train noises?” He demonstrates by making his own terrible train noises. Awsten kicks at him and Jawn dances out of reach.

“Yeah, the fog still happens,” Awsten says. “And people who stay here overnight say they can hear people in the distance talking. But that’s only one of the weird things that’s happened here.”

“Oh, what else?” Jawn says. “Trains stopping, night fog that probably has a normal scientific explanation, chatty ghosts… what else is so cool about this place?”

Awsten flips him off. “The reason the bridge was closed down for good. In 1900, the bridge was hit by lightning while a train was going over it. It caught a passenger car on fire.”

Jawn looks surprised by that. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s actually documented in books and newspapers,” Awsten says. “The train made it across, and stopped right over there,” he points to the far side of the gorge. “Everyone got out, but the train was ruined by the fire. They had bring another train out to haul it away.”

“Okay, I’ll admit that’s scary,” Jawn mutters, looking out over the bridge. “The fire, anyway. Can you imagine what that must have been like?”

Awsten shudders. “And it gets weirder. A week after that, another train went over the bridge and the exact same thing happened.”

“That’s not actually true,” Jawn says.

“It is!” Awsten says, raising his voice. “Look up Sandstone Gorge Bridge fires. Two trains burnt down within a week of each other. People were superstitious and freaked out. After that, and on top of all the weird shit that happened with the fog, nobody really wanted to use the bridge anymore. They figured out a way around the gorge with other railroads and bridges, and did that for a while. By the time people stopped believing so much in the bridge being cursed, the bridge was too old and hadn’t been properly maintained, so it was closed for good.”

“Why’s it still here if that was over a hundred years ago?” Jawn says.

The two of them stop walking. They’re as close to the bridge as Awsten feels comfortable. It’s much longer and bigger and dangerous-looking up close. Awsten crosses his arms.

“There’s a bunch of reasons,” he says. “Plenty of people still thought it was haunted. They had a ton of different explanations for why. The land itself isn’t really usable for much, and nobody wanted to take the effort to come all the way out here and tear the bridge down. Eventually, about twenty years ago, the place got bought and people built a hiking trail down into the gorge. They tried to build a campground too, but construction crews were getting spooked by the fog and the stories, so that didn’t happen. So they just fenced off the tracks to try and keep kids from getting hurt on the bridge.”

Jawn snorts. “Good thing we’re not kids, right?” He starts walking again, onto the tracks. Onto the bridge.

“What are you doing?” Awsten says, panic in his tone. He jumps forwards half a step, reaching out and grabbing Jawn’s arm.

“It’s fine,” Jawn says, looking at Awsten over his shoulder. “I’m just walking across. It’ll look cool.”

“I’m not going on that fucking bridge,” Awsten says.

Jawn laughs. “You don’t have to. You can wait here, and I’ll walk over and then I’ll come right back.”

Awsten’s heart pounds as Jawn takes another step. And another. 

The wooden planks of the bridge creak loudly under his feet and Awsten tenses up. “Stop!” he says.

“I’m going to be fine,” Jawn says. “People walk across this all the time, don’t they?”

“That bridge is over a hundred fucking years old,” Awsten says. “Actually, it’s probably over a hundred fifty years old.”

“I’ll be right back in like five minutes,” Jawn says, not even bothering to look back this time. 

Awsten paces back and forth, watching with terror as Jawn keeps walking across the bridge. He looks back at the safety of their car beyond the fence. Then he looks back at Jawn. 

“If you fucking fall, I’m going to learn necromancy and bring you back just so I can kill you again,” he yells at Jawn, who doesn’t respond. Awsten continues pacing, feeling worse with every second as Jawn walks across the bridge with all the confidence of someone on an afternoon stroll. He looks down at the depth of the gorge below and his body freezes up again.

And.

It’s in his peripheral vision, so maybe Awsten imagines it. Maybe it’s all the stress of the situation. But… for a second, he thinks he sees a faint figure hidden among the shrubs growing out of one side of the gorge. 

A figure shrouded in white.

Awsten jumps and looks directly at the space. The figure is gone.

But the feeling of being watched builds in his chest like he’s drowning.

“JAWN!” Awsten chokes out in a scream, taking off running across the bridge towards Jawn. The bridge shakes dangerously under his footfalls, but he’s fucking desperate. No way in hell is he waiting where a ghost is lingering, probably waiting for Jawn to get far enough away so it can kill him. He’ll take the creepy cursed bridge with his living breathing friend over being alone with a freaky train ghost any day. 

Jawn has turned around, watching Awsten running at him with a confused look on his face.

“Move, move, move,” Awsten pants. He catches up with Jawn and throws himself at him, trembling and clinging. “Oh my fucking god, I just saw something over there.”

“What? Where?” Jawn points the camera at the side Awsten just left. Awsten clutches tighter at Jawn when realization hits him that he’s right in the middle of an ancient bridge made of a bunch of ancient sticks above a horribly deep gorge. 

“Nevermind,” Awsten says. “Let’s hurry up and get across this thing.”

Jawn’s eyebrows are furrowed, but he puts an arm around Awsten and they start moving. Awsten tries not to look at the gorge below, but that only works for about two seconds. He lets out a tiny scream when he looks down.

“I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place,” he chants to himself.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Jawn says. “We’ll, um, we can go back on the trail.”

Awsten nods. The other side of the gorge is too far away. He wants to be back on solid ground right the fuck now.

“Was the bridge used for passenger trains?” Jawn says. “Or freight ones?”

“What?”

“I was just wondering. There’s got to be history about this bridge that isn’t all about the weird things going on. How long was it used?”

“Uh,” Awsten thinks back to the research he did. His mind is swimming with panic, but he manages to drag up a date that he half-remembers. “I think it was built in the 1840s.”

“So it was used for about sixty years,” Jawn says. “I bet for most of that, it was just a normal bridge.”

“Maybe,” Awsten admits. He blinks. The end of the bridge is a lot closer, and relief starts to flood into his chest. 

“It could have been a drought that dried up the river,” Jawn says. “Or people diverting the water for farmland. That happened a lot back then. They didn’t know.”

“I thought about that too,” Awsten says. 

“It’s a cool place though,” Jawn says. “If there weren’t so many stories about it, it’d just be a cool old bridge. You know, it would be a great place for shooting a video or a movie about, like, the wild west.”

They reach the dusty ground on the other side of the bridge and Awsten collapses to his knees. He sighs and buries his face in his hands. “This is the worst place ever. I’m never going to another bridge again.”

Jawn pats his back comfortingly. “Yeah. You want me to cut off the video?” 

Awsten shakes his head. “No. Let’s just go back. Fuck, I don’t even know if we can use this footage.”

“We can make it work,” Jawn assures him. “You want to talk about what you saw? I won’t make fun of you, I promise.”

Awsten looks up at him skeptically. “I… okay, I might not have seen it, but… it looked like there was someone standing on, like, a ledge or something in the gorge. Like twenty feet away from me. But I didn’t really, you know, look straight at them. And when I did, they weren’t there.” He grimaces, feeling chilly from thinking about it. He hopes they won’t see the thing again.

“Huh,” Jawn says. “Are there stories about ghosts showing up when there’s no fog?”

“I don’t remember,” Awsten says. “I guess… maybe? There were a lot of stories I didn’t really pay attention to because they just seemed like they were made up for attention.”

Jawn nods slowly. “Well, we’ll see if this thing shows its face on the way back. If not,” he turns the camera back towards the bridge. “It’s still a really great shot. I think I might come back here once I get a better camera.”

Awsten rolls his eyes, but he gets to his feet. “Don’t waste your money on a camera. Just get an Iphone.”

They find the trail after a few minutes of walking around, and start making their way back. The trail takes them on a gently sloping path down into the gorge. Jawn nearly slips on a few steeper sections, so Awsten takes the phone from him. He stops the recording for a moment and checks the battery.

It’s not too low, but Awsten doesn’t want to take any chances. He gets his charger and power bank and hooks it up. 

“Look at that,” Jawn says from behind Awsten.

Awsten looks up. The trail has nearly reached the bottom of the gorge, and the bridge is on full display above them. It’s way more intimidating from below. His breathing gets stuttered when he thinks about how he was right up there, just a short while ago. 

But it does look cool, so he starts the recording again and hands the phone and charger back to Jawn.

“You can see where the river used to be,” Jawn says, pointing the phone at the walls of the gorge. 

Awsten laughs. “Is this a nature hike now? You gonna start talking about what kinds of trees these are?”

“Yeah,” Jawn says. “You can add your input when we see a ghost, so we don’t identify it wrong—”

Awsten breaks into laughter. It dies down considerably as they continue walking towards the bridge. He tenses up but forces himself to keep going. The sooner they finish this trail, the sooner they’ll be back at their car and the sooner they’ll be able to leave. He glances behind him and his heart jolts in his chest when he sees that Jawn hasn’t moved for a while, watching him from a distance.

“What are you doing?”

Jawn waves at him. “Keep going! This is to show the size of it.”

“We already know the size of it!” Awsten yells back. He looks back at the bridge. He really doesn’t want to walk any closer to it by himself. History aside, ghosts aside… it could crumble down on him at any moment. Or something. 

Awsten looks back to Jawn. “Come on!”

“Just go a bit closer!”

“I fucking hate you!”

“Yeah, me too!”

Awsten’s hands clench. He turns and runs at the bridge. He shrinks in on himself as he runs under the hundred-fifty year old wooden beams and doesn’t relax until he’s well on the other side. He looks back and is relieved to see Jawn finally following him.

“Don’t make me do that again,” Awsten hisses at him.

Jawn puts an arm around him. “Yeah, I’m sorry. You’ll love how it looks though.”

“I hate you,” Awsten says, leaning into Jawn’s side. 

About ten minutes later, the trail takes them back under the bridge again. Jawn remains at Awsten’s side for the whole time. As they emerge from under the shadow of the bridge, Awsten scours what he can see of the bushes on the side of the gorge, but there’s nothing to see. They make it back up to where they parked with no other difficulties or incidents. 

Awsten collapses against the car.

“And that’s the end of the Sandstone Gorge Bridge!” Jawn announces. “That was a bit of a rough start, but it was a really nice hike. I might come back here again sometime. Awsten, what about you?”

“Don’t talk to me about this place ever again,” Awsten grumbles. 

Jawn laughs and turns off the recording so he can get the keys out.

 

~~~~

 

_Geoff Games: I’ve been there before! You should go on the other trail they have too._

_yellowroses: aw I wish I could have seen what awsten saw, it sounds scarey_

_Travis Riddle: Lame… you didn’t get run over by a ghost train._

_XxGlitterBonesxX: you 2 should spend the nite at the next place_

_Katie: ohhh you guys are my new faves!! can you go to a haunted hospital next?_

_stripesandpipesXD: didnt expect a daytime investigation vid to actually be good, nice job. awsten at 6:41 really got me_


	3. Sunrise Inn and Restaurant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awsten and Jawn investigate the Sunrise Inn, a historic landmark that is believed to be haunted. Theme music by Kyle of December's Tragedy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so Awsten and Kyle being twins is like my new favorite thing. and before you read this, check out Keith's totally awesome art for this [here](https://rowsha.tumblr.com/post/186779547394)!!!

Kyle is still fucking around with the brand new camera and Awsten wants nothing more than to snatch it out of his hands. 

“This thing is way too nice for your shitty YouTube channel,” Kyle says, his attention still focused on the screen of the camera. “No offense, Jawn.”

“We’re getting better at it,” Jawn says. 

“If you’re just going to be making fun of me, then give that back and go home,” Awsten grumbles, trying to reach for the camera. His twin holds it up out of reach and backs away, a grin spreading across his face. 

“No,” he says. “Mom asked me to do this. And I watched those videos on your channel; you guys seriously need, like, a focused camera guy. That first video would have been so much better if you weren’t turning off the camera and pointing it at the floor all the time. If you had an actual camera man—”

“And that’s supposed to be you.” Awsten interrupts. 

Kyle smirks and repositions the camera. “Yeah, exactly. Come on, Awsten, start your introduction.”

Awsten’s fully prepared to continue arguing, but Jawn speaks up before he can do so. “Hey, what’s up! This is Jawn and Awsten again. Awsten, what are we going to be—”

“Do you even have a name for this thing you’re doing?” Kyle suddenly interrupts.

Awsten’s going to kill him. “You’re ruining the video!” he says, trying and failing to steal the camera again. 

“You can edit it out if you’re mad about it!” Kyle protests, backing away from Awsten and taking a swing at him when he gets too close. Awsten kind of hopes he’ll trip on his loose shoelaces. Dick. “But I’m serious, you guys need a logo and a real name for this thing. It makes a difference, trust me. Helps you stand out more. I can help you—”

“No!” Awsten says immediately. He’s heard Kyle go through enough terrible band names to know that he does _not_ want his brother’s input on his YouTube channel. But… Kyle does have a point, as much as he hates it. Right now, their channel is just called Awsten and Jawn’s Investigations. He struggles to think of something good on the spot and comes up with absolutely nothing.

“We’re keeping the name we have,” he declares after an awkward moment of silence.

Jawn shrugs. “It’s alright with me.”

Kyle sighs loudly and dramatically. “Fine. Alright, go ahead.”

“Okay,” Awsten says. “Hey, viewers, it’s—”

“What about an intro video?” Kyle interrupts again. 

Awsten leaps at Kyle. Kyle dances out of reach, holding the camera high above his head. Awsten chases his brother around the empty parking lot, yelling. And okay, he _is_ concerned about the safety of the brand new camera, but right now he’s more pissed off at Kyle for ruining his attempts at starting the video. At this rate, it’s going to be dark before they get started at this location. Fuck, Awsten really doesn’t want to be doing this in the dark. The sun’s been sinking lower and lower in the sky for hours.

“No listen, I’ll do it for you!” Kyle yells, bringing Awsten’s thoughts back to his current frustration. “Just like, extra footage of you and Jawn doing your Ghostbusters thing. And I can write you a theme song too—”

“Shut up!” Awsten says. “I don’t need your help! You promised you wouldn’t fuck this up!”

“You haven’t even started yet!” 

“Awsten, calm down, it’s okay,” Jawn says over their argument as they start to run out of breath. “I actually think an intro video sounds cool.” Awsten stops chasing Kyle to glare at Jawn. “Kyle, I’ll send you the clips we didn’t use for the last two videos.”

“Don’t help him,” Awsten says. “He’s _Kyle_. He’s a dick.”

“I’m just trying to, like, be supportive,” Kyle mutters. He moves back into position and lifts up the camera. The red light blinks on again. “Alright, take three. Awsten, tell your audience of— last I checked— about fifty viewers, what you’re standing in front of.”

Awsten’s still annoyed, but he and Jawn move back to where they were before: both of them facing the camera with their backs to the location. 

“What’s up, YouTube!” Jawn says. “We’re Jawn and Awsten, and we’re back with another paranormal investigation!”

“Today we’re at the historic Sunrise Inn and Restaurant,” Awsten says, turning to point at the old building behind them. It’s a modest two-story structure, painted white with yellow shutters on every window. As old as the architecture is, it’s very well maintained. The landscaping is neat and the brick path to the front office is smooth and free of weeds. There’s a hand-painted sign hanging outside the door, with a glowing yellow sun above the words.

“This place isn’t as haunted as the last two places, but we’ve got special permission to be here while the owner’s having some electrical work done,” Awsten says. “So we’re taking advantage of that.”

Jawn snorts a laugh. “Yeah we were definitely trespassing at the last places. Nice to get permission for once.”

Another piece to cut out from the video. Awesome. Awsten fakes a huge smile and looks at Jawn. “Let’s head inside and I’ll tell you about the history of this place.”

The lobby is small, but it’s like something out of a black and white movie. There are paintings and faded photographs in frames along the walls, and a little nook across from the check-in desk with a glass case full of old items from the inn’s early days. To one side is the entrance to the restaurant, and to the other side is a narrow flight of stairs leading upwards, and then the cozy little common area.

“The Sunrise Inn was built in 1885,” Awsten says. “And I guess, it’s a pretty normal historic place. Over a hundred years and it only caught fire once, in 1893. The fire was contained in the kitchen, and it was put out within an hour. Nobody was hurt, luckily. The following year, when they were rebuilding and fixing the damages, the owner at the time decided to make the kitchen into a whole restaurant to bring in more business.”

“Thank god for that,” Kyle says. “You’ve had their breakfast here, right Jawn? The pancakes are so good.”

Jawn shakes his head and Kyle gasps, scandalized. “Fuck! Awsten, you should take him!”

Awsten’s briefly distracted by the idea of taking Jawn here. The Sunrise Restaurant isn’t the cheapest place, but it’s worth it, if nothing else for the freshly squeezed orange juice. It really is a shame that Jawn hasn’t had it yet. And during the day, with plenty of other people, it wouldn’t be a haunted— wait.

Kyle’s got that stupid smirk of his behind the camera. Awsten gapes at him. How _dare_ he? He _promised_ he’d keep that a secret!

“Are there any ghosts that supposedly show up here?” Jawn says, who’s wandered away to look at the items in the glass case.

“Yeah, but reports are inconsistent,” Awsten says. Kyle’s grinning at him, but if Awsten glared at him too long, it’ll mess up the video. And he knows it too, fucking bastard. “Some people hear children running down the halls, others say they see people in old-timey clothes walking around at night. The Inn was actually used as the location for a ghost movie about ten years ago, so tons of people are convinced it’s actually haunted.”

“But you’re not?” Jawn asks. “For once?”

Awsten crosses his arms defensively. “No, I think it might be haunted. But there’s nothing in the history of the Inn to— like, nobody died here or anything. Ghosts are sometimes attracted to, you know, places where people pass through, but it’s more common that they stay in the place where they die.”

Jawn and Kyle both stare at him for a second.

“Since when did you become a ghost expert?” Kyle says. 

“Oh by the way,” Jawn says before Awsten can lapse into another argument with his twin. “You’ve probably noticed we’ve got a new camera recording this. Awsten’s brother Kyle is helping out with that.”

Much to Awsten’s dismay, Kyle actually turns the camera around to point it at his face for a moment. Damn it. Now all the viewers are going to be commenting on how alike they look. Just like all the dumb comments they get at school. Of course they look alike; they’re fucking twins. Even if the cooler twin has very cool red hair and a great sense of style while the lame twin has his boring natural hair color and decided to ‘dress for the occasion’ by throwing on the worst emo band t-shirt he owns. 

"Hey YouTube, it’s Kyle Knight! Check out my band December's Tragedy," Kyle says.

“I’m going to cut that,” Awsten says. 

Kyle snickers and turns the camera back at Awsten. Meanwhile, Jawn sticks his hands in his pockets and wanders over to the front desk, looking at the oil painting behind it. Awsten collects himself again and goes to stand beside Jawn again.

“In the stories I read about people seeing ghosts here,” Awsten says, “It’s always happening in the evening or at night, when the Sunrise Inn isn’t full. So we’ve got a good chance of seeing something, if there is anything haunting this place.”

“It’s not dark outside though,” Jawn points out.

Kyle snorts. “Yeah, cause Awsten’s a fucking coward.”

It takes some effort, but Awsten manages to glare at both of them at the same time. “Fuck you both. So what if I don’t want to walk around a creepy old—”

At that precise moment, the lights cut off. Awsten’s heart stops, and then immediately kicks into overdrive. He throws out an arm to grab Jawn. There’s light coming in through the windows, but the sudden change is terrifying and—

The lights come back on. Jawn looks confused and Kyle seems unaffected, staring at the camera.

“What was that?” Awsten says.

Jawn shrugs and Awsten realizes he’s still clinging onto him and quickly lets go. “You said they were working on the electricity, right?” Jawn says. “Probably just that.”

“Yeah…” Awsten says. Having the place to themselves is suddenly way less fun than it was when he was talking with the Sunrise Inn’s owner about it. “Alright, let’s get this over with before that happens again.”

“Oh, if it does,” Kyle says brightly. “This thing has a night vision mode.”

Awsten rolls his eyes and turns away from him. “Alright, so all the doors are unlocked. The owner says we can go in the rooms as long as we don’t make a mess of anything.” He leads Jawn and Kyle through the common room— which has a beautiful baby grand piano sitting in the yellow-gold light from the window— to the hallway. There are doors on either side of the hallway, which takes a turn to the left just ahead. Jawn reaches for the first one, labeled with a polished brass number 1. 

Jawn goes inside first, then Awsten, and lastly Kyle. Jawn switches the light on.

It’s a perfectly normal room. Very vintage with its heavy curtains, canopied bed, and patterned rug on the hardwood floor, but it’s very clean and there’s a modern television mounted on the wall. Awsten and Jawn poke around for a minute.

“We should get equipment,” Jawn says. 

Awsten looks at him. “What do you mean?”

“Ghost hunting equipment,” Jawn explains.

“Oh, like an EMF meter,” Kyle says. “And an EVP recorder. Those things that supposedly pick up ghost activity. Yeah, that’d make this more exciting.”

Awsten groans. “I want to, but that shit’s expensive. We _just_ got a real camera.”

Jawn opens the drawer beside the bed and shuts it quickly. “Yeah, but it’ll be fun, right? I’ve been looking into that stuff. I think I’m going to get one of them. For the next place.”

Awsten shivers at the thought of actually hearing ghost voices. He’s terrified enough of cold spots and breezes when he explores these places. If he actually hears some disembodied voice talking, and if it actually says something that makes sense— 

“Awsten _would_ have enough to get something too,” Kyle says in a tone that sets off alarm bells in Awsten’s head. He whirls around to gape at Kyle. He wouldn’t dare… “But he spent it all on—”

“None of his fucking business, Kyle!” Awsten says. He grabs Kyle’s arm and drags him out of the room. “Shut up!” he hisses at his brother. “Don’t fucking ruin this! You promised!”

“What, the video?” Kyle says, smirking. “Or your cru—”

“Both!” Awsten says loudly. 

Jawn comes out of the room, looking concerned. “Everything alright?”

“Yes,” Awsten says, shooting another glare at Kyle. 

They go into another room after that, which is similarly interesting in its aesthetic, but it doesn’t even feel remotely haunted. Rather, it feels like an old relative’s house. They walk the entire first floor hallway to the end, hoping for a room numbered 13, but the numbers end at 11. Awsten takes them all into that one, and they find a nice view of a pond out the window, but nothing else.

“Time to go upstairs?” Jawn says. 

Awsten leaves Room 11 and turns directly to his right, reaching out for the door to the stairwell. It’s locked. He frowns and tries putting his weight into it, just in case it’s stuck. No luck. 

“I thought you said all the doors were unlocked,” Kyle says.

“They should be,” Awsten says, slowly releasing the metal door handle. It’s cold to the touch, and he rubs his hand against his side afterwards.

“There’s the stairs back near the front desk,” Jawn says. 

Awsten feels a little uncomfortable as he turns away from the locked door. He catches the suspicion on Kyle’s face just a moment before there's a heavy creak from the floor above them. Kyle’s mouth drops open in shock and Awsten’s sure that his does too.

Awsten feels numb and cold, slowly raising his head to look at the ceiling. There's another creak, like someone's taking a step. And another. Awsten's eyes feel like they're popping out of his face. He could _swear_ — 

"Do you see the floor moving?" he whispers. There's another creak and Awsten doesn't know if he wants to get the hell out of here or run upstairs to see what’s causing the creaking.

"No?" Jawn says. "It's an old building; the floors creak."

"Or someone else is here with us," Kyle says. Awsten kind of wants to scream at him. But Kyle just turns and sprints back down the hall.

"Wait!" Awsten says, running after him. He chases Kyle to the other stairwell and together, they hurry up the stairs. They turn the corner to where the creaking noises were coming from. 

It's empty. 

After a beat of silence, Kyle says, “You think there might be someone in one of the rooms?”

Awsten’s not sure whether he’s more afraid that there’s someone here with them or that there might actually be something haunting this place. He tries to convince his racing heart that, if there _is_ someone else here, they’re probably just working on the electricity. That’s the most reasonable explanation. He moves forward to open the room on the left— Room 28— and Jawn and Kyle go for Room 29. 

Awsten steps into 28. It’s essentially the same as the other rooms they’ve poked their heads into downstairs. He hesitates and looks behind him, to see Kyle and Jawn disappearing into 29. Awsten swallows and goes farther into 28. He opens the bathroom door and is relieved to see nothing but a fancy bathtub, sink, and toilet. A quick check around the rest of the room confirms it’s empty. No ghosts hiding behind the curtain, no monster hiding under the bed.

Somehow, that still doesn’t calm him down. He leaves the room and shuts the door behind him firmly. Kyle and Jawn are still in 29. Awsten heads over. 

“You find anything?” he asks, glad that his voice doesn’t shake. 

Kyle turns to point the camera at him from where he’s standing at the end of the bed. “Yeah, check it out,” he says, nodding towards the wall where Jawn’s standing. Awsten looks and, to his complete surprise, sees that the wall of 29 has a sliding panel that reveals a whole separate bedroom.

“Is that a fucking secret room?” Awsten says in disbelief. 

“You’re the expert on this place,” Jawn says, standing in the middle of the possibly-secret doorway. “It was open, like, an inch, so I pushed it the rest of the way open.”

Awsten was not expecting this. He was expecting the Sunrise Inn would be a nice, probably-not-haunted location to visit. He really didn’t need creepy creaking ceilings and secret rooms. Shaking slightly, he goes to join Jawn in the hidden room.

“It’s probably just, like, a double suite,” Jawn says, walking over to the window. “And the sliding wall is for privacy.”

“Maybe that’s how it’s used _now_ , but—” Awsten shivers. This little extra room is small. It’s kind of terrifying. “What were they thinking when they built this? Originally? I fucking swear, if there’s like a peep-hole into another room or someone’s bathroom—”

Of course, that’s the moment that the lights go out again. And, a split-second later, there’s the sliding sound that Awsten immediately knows is the wall closing up again. Awsten whirls just in time to see the wall close them into the room. There’s just the dim light of sunset filtering through the thick curtain over the window. A very heavy sense of dread settles into his chest.

“KYLE!” Awsten screams. “KYLE, OPEN THE DOOR!” He and Jawn both run for the panel, digging their fingers into the edge and pulling it open again. Together, they stumble through the opening. “Kyle?” Awsten calls out again. His brother doesn’t answer. A hurried look around the room makes Awsten realize he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?” Jawn asks. 

“Kyle!” Awsten yells. 

“Yeah?” comes a distant answer from the other side of the _closed_ door back into the hall. 

Awsten yanks it open to find Kyle holding the fucking camera pointed in their faces. He’s got a smug look on his face. The lights turn back on again. “I swear, that could not have happened at a better time,” Kyle says, clearly trying not to laugh. 

Awsten grabs the camera out of his hands. “I fucking hate you.”

“I was just going to leave you guys in there for a bit!” Kyle says. “I didn’t expect the lights to go out again, and, okay, that kinda sucked. But—”

Awsten leaves Kyle and Jawn there and starts stomping back down the hallway to the stairs. He’s so fucking done with this place. He’s not even sure how they’re going to salvage this video. He should really stop and try and film a proper ending, but he needs to get away from Kyle for a bit.

“Look, I _promise_ I won’t do anything like that again,” Kyle says, following Awsten. “I just— okay, I’ll admit, I did that to mess with you, but—”

“Awsten,” Jawn says soothingly from behind Awsten. Awsten groans and stops, right in front of the staircase. Jawn puts an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, let’s take five minutes, calm down, and then finish this. I’ll film the rest, if you want.”

Awsten puts his hand over his face and considers that. Then he glances back at Kyle, waiting just out of kicking range. He really hates Kyle right now… but dear god, he hates that dumb band tshirt even more.

“No, I want Kyle to film it,” Awsten says. “All we need is, like, another minute or two.”

 

~~~~

 

_yellowroses: I love the new intro! and I agree with awsten, swear I saw the ceiling moving too. creepy!_

_fluffypenguinchick: Im here for kyle!!!!_

_Travis Riddle: Oh my god Awsten, you have a doppelganger. Truly the scariest part of the video._

_I have no life: just watched all three of youre videos, pretty good_

_Katie: I loved this!!! And the intro is great!!_

_Geoff Games: Hi Kyle!_

_stripesandpipesXD: itd be cool if u guys could go back at nite. room 29 is tight, might hav some story behind it_

_YEET: FUCK I WANNA GO THERE_

_Alex 3: came here cuz of kyles tweet, love that intro music. can you release the full version?_

_Super Mario Matthew: that intro music is SICK, kyle!_

_f€lonyfourt€€n: are we gonna see ST€VE in this too???_


	4. The Conrad House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awsten and Jawn investigate the infamous Conrad House and question whether or not it's truly haunted, or just surrounded by superstition.

Awsten points his flashlight at the sign hanging above the house. The beam of Jawn’s flashlight joins his, together illuminating the words written in an imitation gothic font.

**THE CONRAD HOUSE**  
**Est. 1900**

“Your first nighttime investigation,” Kyle says, a few feet behind Awsten and Jawn. “How’s it feel?”

“It sucks,” Awsten says. He’d much rather be back at home, or hanging out with other people, or literally anywhere but about to walk into an extremely haunted house with his best friend and his idiot twin. The Conrad House isn’t a very big place, but it has a hell of a reputation. Even situated in the middle of a downtown area, with cars and pedestrians passing by frequently, it’s spooky. It’s a dark spot of evil in the midst of a unassumingly peaceful place.

“Awesome,” Kyle says brightly. “Hey, I’m not going to use the night vision unless you guys want to go in without flashlights.”

Awsten tenses up. 

Jawn laughs. “I think we’ll keep the flashlights on.”

“Alright,” Kyle says. “It looks like it’ll be fine. I’ve been testing it out since the last video and the normal vision at night isn’t bad. But I haven’t figured out how to do night vision with flashlights yet.”

Awsten takes in a deep breath and releases it slowly. “Okay. Let’s get this creepy place over with as soon as possible.”

“You wanna go inside first?” Jawn asks. 

Awsten’s gaze shifts to one of the windows. The curtain almost looks like it’s just moved, but it might also be from the headlights of the car that’s just passed behind them. Fuck, he’s really dreading going inside. “No, it won’t take too long to explain it. You’ve both heard about this place, right?”

Kyle and Jawn both nod. 

Awsten looks back towards the camera, but looking at Kyle to tell his haunted history is weird, so he looks at Jawn instead. “Okay, so the Conrad House was built in 1899. Right after it was finished, Michael Conrad, his wife Mary, and their four children moved in. That was New Year’s Day, 1900. The family lived a pretty normal life. Didn’t cause any trouble or anything. Mr. Conrad worked as a pharmacist and his wife Mary took care of their children.”

“But ten years later,” Jawn says. “That all changed.”

It’s one thing knowing about the story, and another thing to be right outside the house where it all happened. Awsten’s never been inside the Conrad House before. He’s never been on the property at night before either. He feels very alone and vulnerable to what might lurk inside.

“Yeah,” Awsten says, bringing his mind back to the story. “Exactly ten years later, on New Year’s Day, the Conrad family mysteriously all died in their beds. They found internal bleeding in the family’s lungs and blood coming out of their mouths, so the local doctor assumed it was tuberculosis and police ordered the remains and most of the possessions of the Conrad family to be burnt to prevent the infection from spreading to the neighbors. Police were unable to contact any relatives, so the house was put up for public auction. But because people had heard that tuberculosis had killed the family, it stayed vacant for almost eight years.”

Kyle speaks up, “There was something else, remember?”

Awsten looks at him, confused. “What? I haven’t gotten to what happened later.”

“No, it was when the Conrad family was living here,” Kyle says. “I heard somewhere that the entire time they were living in the house, Mary became pregnant a few times but each time, she miscarried.”

Awsten blinks. “I didn’t know that. Where did you hear about it?”

Kyle shrugs. “I don’t know. Might have been when I came here with Otto.”

“You’ve been here?” Awsten says incredulously. “With Otto?”

“Yeah. You haven’t?” Kyle says, just as incredulously.

“Okay, what happened next,” Jawn interrupts. “After the Conrads.”

Awsten tries to shake out the jitters he’s getting. “Okay, so. About eight years after the Conrads’ deaths, the house was bought by a man named Francis Travers. But not even two years later, he sold it and moved out of town without another word. The next owners were the Berkeleys, a family of seven. Almost immediately, they noticed something was wrong. Every single member of the Berkeley family experienced or noticed unnatural things happening. They’d hear a strange voice speaking in a language they couldn’t understand, notice lights being left on, or things moving out of place. Sort of the typical signs of a haunting. This carried on for a few months, until Mrs. Berkeley started experiencing nightmares so bad that, within a year, she committed herself to an asylum. Supposedly.”

Kyle looks as skeptical about that as Awsten feels. 

“The Berkeleys eventually moved out after living in the house for almost nine years. During that time, Mr. Berkeley brought in dozens of priests and spiritualists to try to exorcise the house, but nothing worked. Nobody was able to come up with a solid explanation for the paranormal activity either.”

“And they stayed in there for nine years?” Jawn says. 

“Do you think Mr. Berkeley made it up to cover up the fact that he sent his wife away?” Kyle says. “Like, to keep up the facade?”

Awsten makes a face. “I don’t know. I read that he’d visit his wife regularly, so maybe it wasn’t so bad, but it’s still shitty. Mental health back then was fucked up.” He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, after the Berkeleys moved out, the house’s dark reputation was pretty much confirmed. Over the following years, more priests visited the location, either to cleanse it or to try and communicate with whatever dark energy was inside it. People would move in and move out, sometimes only after a few months. It got to the point that the town wanted to tear it down but then it was bought by a new owner and converted into an office building. But the same thing kept happening. Businesses would move in, and the longest anybody ever stayed was… I think seven and a half years.”

“There’s that theory that anyone who stayed ten years would face the same fate as the Conrads,” Kyle says. “Because the Berkeleys said the signs stopped in the ninth year and it spooked them so bad that they had to leave.”

Awsten shrugs. “What happened to the Conrads only happened that one time, but yeah, the local community got that superstition about the house itself. So eventually, it got bought and turned into an attraction. None of the furniture in the house is original, since most of it was burned when the Conrads died, but it’s as accurate as they could make it, according to the website.”

“So people think it’s haunted by the Conrads, or by something else?” Jawn says. 

Awsten shoves his hands into his pockets to keep himself from fidgeting nervously. “I guess both? At the time, everyone assumed it was tuberculosis, and no investigation was launched to come up with any other possibilities. But all of them dying all at once, exactly ten years after moving in— it’s fucking weird. That’s why some people think there’s some kind of evil presence within the house that killed the Conrads and spooked all the other residents. But the Conrads were like, totally normal people. If they were killed, their spirits would have a reason to linger and— oh don’t look at me like that!”

Jawn lifts his free hand in a gesture of peace. “Hey, I’m trying to be open-minded here. Okay, so it’s either something evil that killed the Conrads or the Conrads seeking justice for their murders. Or, yknow, an old drafty house that everyone’s superstitious about.”

Awsten glares. 

“You guys ready to check it out?” Kyle says.

Awsten looks back up at the house. He’d picked out the brightest flashlight he could find for this location. When he was preparing, he thought it would make him feel a bit safer, being able to see more with all the light. But he knows it won’t matter once he goes inside. He already knows he’s going to lose his mind freaking out. 

He takes the key he’d been given out of his pocket and walks up to the front door.

“Does this place do this kind of thing often?” Jawn asks as Awsten pushes the door open. “For people looking for ghosts and stuff?”

“Yeah,” Awsten says. He hesitates in the entrance hallway and then moves towards the entry way into the living room. “They have one evening set aside each week if you want to do what we’re doing, recording a video and all. They just ask that they can put the videos on their website. They’ve got a whole section for investigators’ experiences. They also do group tours, individual tours, ghost festivals leading up to Halloween…”

He stops inside the living room. There’s a rope barricade that’s been moved out of the way, so they can explore the entirety of the room. Awsten’s been told to please refrain from moving anything around, but that it was fine to touch things, since almost everything was a reproduction. 

The living room is set up with plain-looking wooden chairs and several sign boards explaining the history that Awsten’s just told the camera. There’s a few old photos of the previous residents on the walls, which Awsten points the camera at.

“Is this another place where we should be listening for ghost voices?” Jawn says, walking past Awsten to look more closely at the photos on the walls. 

“I guess,” Awsten says. “Um. If there’s anyone here… Mr. Conrad and your family… Mrs. Berkeley… uh, give us a sign? Move something or say something.”

Kyle moves around to point the camera at Awsten’s face. Awsten considers saying something else, but then he feels it. An extreme coldness, as if he’s just stepped into a freezer. His skin crawls with goosebumps and as he opens his mouth in a shocked response, he could _swear_ he sees his breath leaving as a vapor, like on a cold day. 

He meets Kyle’s eyes behind the camera and from the look on his face, he feels it too.

“You feel that?” Awsten whispers. “How cold it just got?”

“What?” Jawn says from the other side of the room.

Kyle moves in closer at the same time that Awsten pulls up his sleeves to show the hair sticking up on his arms. He’s freezing and he breaks into shivers a moment later. 

“Awsten?” Jawn says. “What’d you say?”

Awsten and Kyle don’t respond, so Jawn makes his way over. Before he gets close enough to see what Kyle’s pointing the camera at, the cold spot is gone. Awsten still shivers from the phantom sensation. 

“That was fucking freaky,” Kyle says. “I think I got that thing with your breath, but the light wasn’t great. We’ll see later.”

Fuck, Awsten’s flashlight is pointed at the floor. He lifts it up to point at his arm, and there’s still goosebumps there. Jawn sticks his head closer.

“Why are we filming your arm?” he says.

Awsten huffs and turns away. “Come on, let’s go to the next room.” If he’s experiencing paranormal shit already, then he wants to get done with this place as soon as possible. Fuck getting evidence; he hates this place. He sweeps his flashlight around to make sure he’s not about to run into anything and follows the carpets laid out on the floor marking the path of the usual tour. The next room is a sort of study, or a library, with cabinets and bookshelves filled with old dusty things. 

Awsten comes to a halt as another coldness comes over him, but it’s gone a second later. Feeling even more uncomfortable, he inches closer to Jawn.

“None of that stuff is real, right?” Jawn says, his flashlight passing over old bottles full of colored liquids on a shelf.

“No, it’s all set up to look old and creepy,” Kyle explains. “That’s what they do; it’s all for the haunted house look. Like… when I went on the tour during one of their pre-Halloween festival days. They had these actors dressed up like the Conrads— but, you know, ghosts— sitting around and whispering. It was fucking crazy. Otto was losing his mind the whole time.”

“That’s kind of disrespectful, isn’t it?” Awsten says.

Kyle shrugs. “I guess, but it’s not like they were covered in fake blood or acting evil. It was mostly for the kids, to give them something to visualize.”

“Did they have a fake evil ghost too?” Jawn says, walking over to the other side of the room to look at something in a cabinet more closely. Kyle goes to follow after him, leaving Awsten alone on the carpet.

Awsten opens his mouth to say something, but the coldness comes again, even more intense than a moment ago.

“Okay, fuck,” he says in a shaky voice, interrupting whatever Kyle’s just started saying. “Are you guys feeling cold spots too?”

Kyle and Jawn turn back and the coldness vanishes again. 

“You felt another one?” Kyle says.

Jawn frowns and comes back. “Cold spots? It could just be—”

“The wind, yes, I know,” Awsten groans. “But I felt one back in the first room and _two_ just now, in the same fucking place. It’s— fucking unsettling.”

Jawn points his flashlight at the floor while Kyle comes close with the camera. There’s nothing but carpet and floor beneath Awsten’s feet. They move to look above, at the ceiling. 

“What’s above us?” Jawn says.

“Just bedrooms,” Kyle says. “I think the one above right here is the one where Mr. and Mrs. Conrad were found.”

Another chill comes and goes in a matter of seconds. Awsten tenses up and then turns and leaves the room as fast as he can.

“Wait!” Jawn says, hurrying after him. “Are you— are we going up there next? What about the rooms down here?”

“I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t fucking care about this place anymore,” Awsten says, walking through three new cold spots as he speed-walks through the kitchen and dining room. Nope. Fucking nope. He officially hates this place. 

Jawn and Kyle catch up with him right as he’s about to grab the handle of the front door.

“Come on, the upstairs won’t take that long,” Kyle says. 

Awsten wrenches his arm out of Kyle’s grasp, but then Jawn moves in front of him, blocking the door. 

“Just two minutes upstairs,” Jawn says. “I’ll be there with you, we’ll look around and see all the gross old stuff they’ve decorated this place with— you know, that’s probably what’s making you so nervous.”

“No,” Awsten says through gritted teeth. “The fucking furniture isn’t causing all these cold spots. Cold spots are caused by ghosts lingering in a location, and I’ve felt like a dozen since I’ve come in here, and if the family died _upstairs_ , then there’s going to be even more, and if there’s something actually evil in here—”

Jawn cuts him off. “Awsten. Calm down. It’s okay. It’s just an old creepy house full of drafts— you know, they’ve probably put in fans and stuff to make the drafts. Like, it _is_ a haunted attraction. The motors for that stuff are probably all set up in the basement under the floorboards.”

Awsten’s mind goes blank with fear. “There’s a basement. Oh my god, there’s a fucking basement.”

He knows, from all his reading, that the reports of strange activity are almost entirely exclusive to the first and second floors, with the rare sightings in the grounds outside the house. He doesn’t recall reading about any reports about things in the basement. But there’s just something intrinsically creepy about old basements. Moreso, old basements in old haunted houses.

Awsten blinks. Kyle and Jawn are both pulling him towards the stairs. Two minutes, he tells himself. Just get a bit of footage of the upstairs rooms, and then they can leave. There’s no reason for them to go down to film the basement. 

He follows Jawn up the stairs, which creak predictably, but it’s not as bad as the Miller place. He ignores the peeling paint on the walls and keeps his flashlight beam pointed at the floor in front of him. 

First stop: Mr. and Mrs. Conrad’s bedroom. It’s definitely made up to look as old and creepy as possible, but it’s not bad. Awsten stands in the doorway as Jawn walks around with Kyle, looking at things and asking the Conrads to make some kind of sign. Awsten doesn’t join Kyle in asking for the ghosts to appear, inwardly hoping nothing else happens. The hair on the back of his neck is standing up, but he’s pretty sure it’s just from tension.

They move on to another much smaller bedroom. Similarly creepy, but similarly empty of any terrifying cold spots and suspicious ghost-related activity. Of course, Awsten is stubbornly staying in the doorways of each room, since he can’t bring himself to walk any farther into them. 

They proceed to a third and fourth bedroom, and the lack of activity is starting to make Awsten feel more comfortable again. 

“Were all of these rooms the original rooms?” Jawn says, peering out the window to a view of the yard outside. “Cause, I don’t know, can you imagine someone trying to rent out these little rooms as offices? That’s a better explanation for why that didn’t work.”

“I think so,” Kyle says. “Awsten? What did you read about that?”

Awsten leans against the frame of the door. The wood creaks noisily, he jumps, and straightens up again. “Um, I don’t know. It looks like that. I guess they painted it or something to make it more appealing.”

Kyle laughs as he and Jawn leave the room. “Dude, even if you didn’t believe this place was haunted, it would suck as an office. It’s so old and shitty.”

“Is that the last room?” Jawn says. 

“Yes,” Awsten says, because he wants to leave.

“No,” Kyle says, because he clearly loves tormenting Awsten. “There’s the nursery. We passed it— it’s right beside the master bedroom.” He turns the camera back towards the first doorway they went through, where a narrow door is set into the wall.

Awsten groans. “Alright, so we look at the nursery, and then we leave, right?”

“Sure,” Jawn says.

“Hey, it’s not too bad,” Kyle says, following the two of them as they walk back across the landing. “No creepy footsteps or falling trees or anything. Yeah, the history is freaky, but—”

Awsten pushes the door of the nursery open and points his flashlight inside. It catches on a large cradle. Which is _moving_ with very faint creaks. Back and forth. And back and forth again.

Awsten’s mouth drops open. 

Then he turns and runs straight into Kyle, knocking him over and falling on top of him in a wild scramble. 

“Whoa, you saw that right?” Kyle says, his voice shaking. 

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” Awsten says, but he’s trembling so much that he can’t get steady on his hands and knees. “Let’s go, let’s go, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

A hand comes down to help get him up. “Awsten, wait,” Jawn says, pulling him up to his feet. “Look, it stopped as soon as I walked in. It’s got to be on a timer or something, right?” 

Awsten laughs nervously, clinging onto Jawn. “I don’t care. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Kyle gets up and walks past them into the room. He crouches down next to the cradle. “I… yeah it looks like there’s a motor? There’s wires underneath it. Man, that kinda sucks. We should probably cut that bit out cause they’ll get mad if we expose their little trick. But hey, at least it proves the nursery isn’t haunted.” 

Awsten glances back at the stairs. If they didn’t see anything upstairs, where all the activity should be strongest, then what was with all those cold spots downstairs? 

Jawn seems to have read his mind. “I bet they’ve got fans and shit under the floor downstairs. They can’t set that up on the second floor because you’d be able to see it from below. Come on, I wanna see the basement before we leave.”

“No!” Awsten says loudly.

“Come on Awsten, there’s not going to be anything but all their Halloween props down there,” Jawn says, patting Awsten on the shoulder. 

“No, please,” Awsten says. “I just want to leave…”

Jawn and Kyle start downstairs, followed by Awsten whose protests are being ignored. Awsten would be pissed about that, but he’s just desperate to get out of the Conrad House. He shivers as they return to the kitchen, where there’s a tiny wooden door that says STAFF ONLY on it. 

Jawn reaches out and opens the door. A very cold and surprisingly strong breeze escapes, causing Jawn to stumble backwards into Awsten. Kyle backs up a step.

“Oh…” Kyle says. “I, um… don’t want to go down there either.”

Jawn looks back at both of them. “Oh come on, it’ll be fine. I promise you, there’s _nothing_ down there.”

He reaches out and takes Awsten’s free hand. Jawn’s hand is warm, and it’s such a contrast from the freezing cold breeze that just came out. Awsten’s moving before he even realizes it. He moves slowly, squeezing together with Jawn as they take one step at a time. The stairs are narrow but sturdy. Awsten peeks down at them and suspects they’ve been replaced recently. Then he lifts his flashlight to look around the basement.

Just like Jawn had suggested, it’s full of boxes and furniture similar to the things they saw upstairs. There’s even a rack of old period costumes, and a table with a mirror set on top of it for putting on makeup. If it wasn’t for the freezing cold temperature and the reality of what lies above him, Awsten would almost be comforted by seeing it all.

But it’s still a basement and a little voice in the back of his mind is confident that there’s going to be something lurking in the shadows behind his back.

“Okay,” Awsten says, trying to sound calm. “We’ve seen the basement. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Kyle pushes past the two of them to film their surroundings. “So what do you think? Is this place haunted?”

“Definitely,” Awsten says. He goes up the steps as fast as he possibly can. 

“I don’t think so,” Jawn says. “It’s cold enough down here that I bet that’s what you were feeling. Drafts. The history is weird— and full of some misfortune— but it’s just an old attraction now. It’s cool though. I kinda wanna come back during Halloween.”

Awsten rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you can go by yourself.” He reaches the door again and neither Kyle nor Jawn stop him from going through this time.

~~~~

_Conrad House Official: Check out the latest investigation into this house’s paranormal activity!_

_yellowroses: this was great! even though there wasn’t much activity, I loved seeing you three again!_

_Travis Riddle: Awsten I hate to be the one to tell you this but your doppelganger is haunting you._

_Katie: wait, so were there fans under the floor?? You didnt show that_

_Alex 3: cool video again_

_fluffypenguinchick: KYLE!!!!!_

_XxGlitterBonesxX: finlly a night video. please do more, its funy seeing aws scarred_

_F€LON-2000: are awsten and kyle related to st€v€? they look just like him O.o_

_Alex 3: @F€LON-2000 yes their all related_

_chaos: nice organic material youve got. I hate all those channels out there that bring in tons of equipment to come up with fake evidence. stick with cameras. try to provoke the ghosts more tho_

_fuck truck: this is my favorite haunted place_

_miranda brown: bring a ouija board to the next place!_

_Mortal Jason: idk if that was editing or smth but that thing with austins breath was fucked up lol_

_Geoff Games: whoops sorry I missed this_


	5. Our Swamp Tour Gets Crashed By The Jonas Brothers (not clickbait)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We tried to book a private tour of Lola St. Martin Swamp to look for the monster that supposedly lives in those waters, and some pop stars decided to join last minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is sort of a crossover with Keith’s very cool [rootin tootin hunter boyos series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1414093). I just thought it’d be cool to bring the two spooky aus together like this. This is gonna be the only time the jobros show up in X, and it’s just for fun :D also!!! its the 50th anniversary of scooby doo!!!!! so I had to finish this chapter for that

Awsten sits on the old wooden picnic table just outside of the tiny office building with his arms crossed and a deep scowl on his face. It’s hot and muggy and he’s fucking exhausted. The only thing keeping him here despite the news he’s just been given is pure spite. Also the fact that they drove over two hours to get here.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” he mutters for the fourth time. “They fucking promised me we’d be alone. I called so many times. And now they pull this shit last minute.”

Kyle doesn’t have the camera on yet. There’s no point, since they’re waiting for the surprise additional guests that will be on the tour. Which was supposed to be private. He looks across the picnic table for sympathy and finds none. Jawn has his head rested in one of his palms, eyes closed, and Kyle’s texting on his phone. A can of bug spray is sitting on the table between them, which the three of them sprayed heavily on themselves as soon as they stepped out of the car. The bugs and mosquitoes are still buzzing ominously nearby, making him twitch every minute.

Awsten fucking hates mosquitoes. 

Not too far from the picnic table is the small dock. The boat they’re going to be in— an airboat with seating for about ten people— is waiting, bobbing gently in the water. 

“Where the fuck are they?” Awsten says, looking back at the office. “They’re going to be fucking late. They’ve already ruined our shoot, the least they could do is show up on time.”

“We can explain what we’re doing,” Kyle says, sounding tired. “Maybe they’ll agree to stay out of the shot if we’re nice about telling them.”

“Or we can tell them that we booked the tour first and ask them if they’ll come back later,” Jawn says. He sounds as annoyed as Awsten is. 

Awsten catches the distant noise of a car approaching. “That’d better be them,” he says. 

Sure enough, a moment later, a car is approaching the office, driving slowly on the muddy unpaved road. It parks beside Jawn’s car, then the engine turns off. Awsten knows he’s glaring but maybe whoever is in the car will take it as squinting if they look over. The mid-afternoon light’s sort of in his eyes, after all. 

One of the doors open and someone steps out. Someone… who might be around his age? Maybe older? Wearing expensive clothes, dark hair—

“Who is that— I feel like I’ve seen that guy before…” Awsten says. Two other guys appear from the other side of the car and the three walk towards the office. There’s something about them… something familiar. Not someone from back home, but… 

“Is that— is that the fucking Jonas Brothers?” Kyle says, suddenly standing up. Awsten frowns at Kyle, and then takes another look back at the three people who are going to be intruding on their swamp tour.

“Oh my god,” Kyle whispers. “That’s— that’s Nick— oh my god. Oh my god. Awsten, I can’t do this. I can’t be in a boat with them. Awsten… Awsten, just leave me in the car.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Jawn says.

Awsten glances from the office— the Jonas Brothers have just gone in through the door— back to Kyle. Kyle, who has moved away from the table to pace back and forth, pulling at his hair. A smile slowly grows on Awsten’s face as he thinks about how, in the midst of all of Kyle’s emo band posters in his room at home, there’s a whole big section dedicated to posters of Nick Jonas right above his bed. 

“Jawn, please can I have the keys?” Kyle asks, a note of desperation in his voice. 

“Don’t give him the keys,” Awsten says, reaching out to put his hand on Jawn’s arm to keep him from moving. Jawn looks confused.

“Awsten,” Kyle sobs. 

Awsten sighs. “Kyle, you can’t just run and hide. Nick Jonas is in that office right now. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Are you really going to pass it up because you’re scared?”

“Awsten, I can’t—” 

“Also, we need you,” Awsten presses on. Like hell is he going to let Kyle hide in the car and miss his chance to potentially sit next to his biggest celebrity crush. He’s just got to keep Kyle distracted until the Jonas Brothers come out and it’s too late for Kyle to run. “The viewers like you as the cameraman. Fuck if I know why, but it’s been working. Like, half the comments that I read were your fans, I’m pretty sure.” It was annoying at the time, but the views have been climbing steadily nonetheless. “People are watching. Because of you.”

“Hey, they might have clicked the link because of Kyle, but they get to see _you_ , the cooler twin, when they watch it,” Jawn says, looking at Awsten with a weird kind of intensity that makes his heart beat a bit faster. Awsten forgets what he was about to say for a second. 

Kyle scoffs. “Awsten’s not the cooler twin. No, some of them have been asking me on Twitter if the channel is like, promo for the next EP I’m working on.”

Awsten tries to imagine Kyle writing songs about creepy haunted places and his mind just can’t do it. He laughs a little at that.

The door opens at that moment and Kyle actually goes pale. Awsten gets up, picks up the camera, and shoves it into Kyle’s hands.

“I look like a fan,” Kyle whispers in horror.

“No you don’t,” Awsten says. “You look like my lame twin.”

Mr. Chester, an old balding man with a worn straw hat and mud-covered boots, is leading the Jonas Brothers over to the picnic table. He waves at them as he approaches. Awsten is feeling much less annoyed at him and his coworker in the office now that he knows who exactly the surprise guests are.

“Sorry for th’wait, Mr. Knight,” he says. “An’ I’m real sorry about the last minute—”

“That’s alright,” Awsten says, in a much better mood now. Kyle is stiff as a statue beside him. “As long as you three don’t mind us filming this for our YouTube channel?”

Joe Jonas— Awsten can tell who’s who now that they’re up close; he remembers from all the times Kyle talked about them— looks a bit uneasy. “What’s your YouTube channel? Is it like, vlogs?”

“No, we’re paranormal investigators,” Jawn says. He’s still standing on the other side of the picnic table, and he’s making no move to get any closer. “Awsten thinks this swamp is haunted.”

“Oh it _is_ haunted,” Mr. Chester says emphatically. “Let’s get y’all on the boat so I can tell ya all about it. Ya don’t have to wear life jackets if ya don’t wanna, but there’s some in the front if yer worried about fallin’ in.”

The three Jonas Brothers all look at each other, doing some nonverbal communication that Awsten bets Kyle is losing his mind over. He nudges him, smirking.

“Sorry we haven’t introduced ourselves yet,” Awsten says as Mr. Chester leads them to the boat. “I’m Awsten Knight, and this is my brother Kyle. And this is my best friend Jawn.”

The Jonas Brothers all introduce themselves as well, which is completely unnecessary but polite anyways. Awsten shakes their hands and forces Kyle to do so as well. For whatever reason, Jawn doesn’t, opting to climb into the boat instead and take the seat in the back right next to Mr. Chester. The Jonas Brothers go in next, Nick sitting in the front row and Kevin and Joe settling in the middle row behind him. 

“Kyle, you get in the front so you can aim the camera back at the rest of us,” Awsten says, already pushing Kyle towards the seat right next to Nick. Kyle’s shaking slightly as he sits down.

“You, uh, you don’t mind?” he says in a tiny voice, unable to look Nick Jonas in the eyes.

“No,” Nick says. 

Kyle drops into the seat like a rock, turns stiffly around, and lifts up the camera. Awsten kind of loves how his face locks up with panic at the realization that he's turned towards Nick Jonas. Nick meanwhile is completely unaffected, looking like his mind is a mile away. “Um. Awsten," Kyle says. "Do you want to start now, or… uh.”

“Yeah, once we start moving, we can do our intro,” Awsten says. He glances at Joe and Kevin. “You guys don’t mind, right?” The Jonas Brothers still look kind of uneasy, which is kind of bullshit, seeing as how they’re still insisting on going on the tour with them. They can put up with whatever Awsten wants to do, since they’re the intruders. But Awsten can be nice. “We won’t make a big deal about you guys being on the tour with us,” he adds. “We’re just looking for, like, ghosts and stuff.”

Joe smiles. “Yeah. Do whatever you want, man.”

Mr. Chester starts the engine of the boat, which thankfully isn’t as loud as Awsten was worrying it’d be. The boat pulls away from the dock, and then Mr. Chester turns it towards the forest of bald cypress trees draped with spanish moss, reflected in the algae-thick water.

“Alright Kyle, you filming?” Awsten says.

Kyle lifts a shaky thumbs-up next to the camera. Awsten grins.

“Hey, YouTube, it’s Awsten and Jawn,” Awsten says. “Today we’re on Ken Chester’s swamp tour of the Lola St. Martin Swamp. Mr. Chester here agreed to let us have a mostly-exclusive tour of the whole swamp, including a special place that he doesn’t usually go on tours.” At least that’s what Mr. Chester had promised on the phone the first time Awsten called. Hopefully he hasn’t forgotten.

“And we’re crashing it,” Joe pipes in, leaning his face into the camera frame. “Sorry, Awsten.”

Awsten gives a little smile and a shrug. “Alright, so I’m gonna start with the story about this place.”

“If ya have any questions, I can fill in fer ya,” Mr. Chester adds.

Awsten nods. “Okay, so… this place is a bit more— I guess _supernatural_ than the stuff we’ve been investigating so far. No ghosts, for once.”

Jawn makes a little amused noise from behind Awsten. 

Awsten keeps going. “As far back as records go— and, you know, local legends— people have claimed there’s some kind of monster living in these waters. Not just something that supposedly eats people—”

“Like an alligator?” Jawn suggests. Awsten turns back to swat his hand at him. 

Beside Jawn, Mr. Chester chuckles. “Oh it’s more’n jus’ a gator, boy.”

“Yeah, shut up Jawn, I’m about to explain,” Awsten says. As he faces forward again, he notices that the Jonas Brothers actually all seem interested in what he’s about to say. Hopefully Kyle’s getting a bit of that with the camera. It’ll be something new for the viewers. Actual interest in the spooky history of a haunted place.

“Okay, yeah, you’d think it was just alligators, since this is a swamp,” Awsten admits. “But there’s more to the legend. People say they hear voices, and even music and lights that lures them in. There used to be more people living around this area, but all the unexplained missing people cases made it, y’know, less of an ideal place to raise your family. The people who owned and sold the land back then, the St. Martins, tried to deal with the problem by offering bounties for alligators and even snakes, but it didn’t do anything about the number of missing people, or the strange ways that they were said to disappear.”

“Wait,” Kevin says. “You said this monster sings and lures people in to… to kill them, right? So it’s like… like a swamp siren?”

Awsten rolls his eyes. “No—”

“Sirens aren’t real,” Jawn retorts. 

“I mean, there’s a couple of possible explanations,” Awsten says. “But sirens… no. Those are like mermaids, aren’t they?”

Joe mutters something under his breath. Awsten would call him out on it if he wasn’t sure that Kyle would lose his mind.

So instead he pauses to take in the beautiful scenery they’re passing— the clusters of bald cypress trees looming above them on either side. The water ripples off to the side of the boat and seeing that— the reminder that there’s something somewhere below the surface— makes Awsten’s mind fill with fear. Mr. Chester’s website claims that the alligators in this swamp haven’t disturbed any swamp tours, but that doesn’t make this place any less dangerous. 

“Since a lotta the people what went missin’ were poor folks and childrens,” Mr. Chester says. “Someone mighta been huntin’ ‘em. Most likely was ol St. Martin himself, since after ‘e died, the missin’ people reports went down a lot. But they mighta not been reported as much. Could also a’been the ghosts of them that got driven off this land by the St. Martins in th’first place.”

“Yeah. All the typical explanations for hauntings. And then there’s the monster theory,” Awsten says. He frowns as he thinks back over the things he read about this place. “But that’s not— I don’t really believe in the idea that it’s a single monster because it would have been living here for like… three hundred years at least. So if it’s not a ghost that’s been doing this— and it’s probably not— then it’s most likely some kind of supernatural force possessing the alligators that live around here—”

“Are you fucking serious?” Kyle interrupts, at the same time that Jawn breaks out laughing. 

“Possessed alligators?” Joe says, sounding more horrified than skeptical. "Mr. Chester, is that really what… what people think is going on?"

Mr. Chester hums. “I’ve heard a lotta explanations, and I dunno. Makes sense, considerin’ what I hear.”

“Have you seen anything, or heard the sounds?” Kevin asks. 

“Oh yeah,” Mr. Chester says. “Plenty a’times. We might be lucky an’ catch it today.”

“Lucky,” Awsten repeats. He shakes his head. “Yeah, it’d be cool to hear it, I guess. But anyway, there’s a bunch of different ideas about what’s going on here. It’s a weird place—”

“It’s beautiful though,” Jawn says. “If it wasn’t for all the bugs and the humidity, it’d be nice.”

“Oh,” Kyle says suddenly. “Do you, uh. We have some bug spray if you need—”

“That’d be great, thanks,” Joe says, reaching out to take it. He and Kevin spray themselves, and then hand it over to Nick. Once Nick is done, he just puts it on the floor in front of Kyle, which means he literally leans into Kyle’s space for a few seconds. Nice.

With his history done, Awsten’s not sure what else to do. He looks back at Jawn, but his friend is just watching the scenery as Mr. Chester continues to steer the boat through the swamp. Awsten hopes Kyle is recording plenty of the sights. He was hoping for this video to be a nice change from the last ones. It’s certainly going to be a surprise with the fucking Jonas Brothers in it. 

“What are you guys doing out here anyway?” Awsten says. “We can cut this or… or you don't have to answer.”

“We uh—” Kevin says. “Well, we’re on tour right now, but we’ve got a day off and…”

“We heard about this place and wanted to see it,” Joe says. 

Awsten cocks his head. “You had a day off and decided to check out a swamp?” A fucking _swamp_?

“Avoids the crowds,” Joe says.

“You enjoyin’ it then?” Mr. Chester says. “She’s a beauty of a lake ain’t she?”

“Even with the evil possessed man-eating alligators,” Awsten says.

Nick suddenly speaks up for the first time since sitting down in the boat. “Actually, it’s not alligators. It's definitely a—” 

“Legend.” Kevin says, a bit louder than probably necessary. He laughs. “Like you said, there’s tons of explanations, right? We just wanted to come and see the swamp. It’d be cool if we could hear the noises that you were talking about, Mr. Chester, but—”

“I think it’s possessed alligators,” Awsten says, crossing his arms and frowning.

“It’s just normal alligators,” Jawn mutters. “Or, you know, just people getting lost. It might even be a lot of things going on and people just assume it’s all the same thing that’s getting them. Right, Mr. Chester?”

“Mm,” Mr. Chester says. “Well, when ya hear the noises, ya might think different.”

Silence falls between everyone as they continue traveling deeper and deeper into the swamp. After a while, Mr. Chester points out a few abandoned dilapidated old shacks where people used to live. Some of them even have half-sunken boats tied to the sides. All of them are in extreme states of disrepair and are probably full of snakes and spiders and shit. Awsten shifts closer to Jawn and Mr. Chester as they pass one with creepy shadows inside.

“How many people used to live out here?” he asks.

“Oh, who knows,” the old man says. “I keep findin’ ol’ places I never seen before. S’a big swamp, y’know. An’ time ‘n the weather takes more away every year.”

“Nobody really _lives_ out here now, do they?” Kevin says.

“Well, not official like,” Mr. Chester says. “People come fer fishin’ an’ huntin’ all the time. Stay in some’a these places. I suppose if yer lookin’ for another explanation for the music and the voices, it could be that. But… I like ta believe it’s somethin’ else.”

Awsten squints at another of the shacks as they pass by. It sort of looks like someone might have been living in it recently, even if only for a short time. 

“It doesn’t sound like normal voices, does it?” Nick says, startling Awsten again. “When you hear it? It’s more musical?”

“Well…” Mr. Chester scratches at his neck.

“Like a radio?” Jawn suggests. 

Mr. Chester has a faraway look on his face. "It's eerie. Don't sound natural. But yea, it sounds real enticin’. Folks here all know better'n ta go lookin' but I tell ya, sometimes it's hard."

Awsten glances back at Kyle to see if he’s as unsettled by that comment as Awsten is. Kyle is looking out over the side of the boat, filming the water as the boat continues on into the swamp. Awsten breathes out a sigh and stares out as well, wondering if he’s going to see anything— or hear it. Honestly… Awsten didn’t think much of the sounds when he was reading up on this place. He just sort of dismissed it because the possessed alligator theory seemed more likely. 

Now… the idea of possessed alligators swimming around under this tiny ass boat is terrifying as fuck. Especially if they’re going to stick their heads up and sing something to hypnotize them or something. Jeez. He’s going to lose it.

“How, um, how far are we going into the swamp?” Awsten asks, looking back at Mr. Chester. Behind him, he can hear the Jonas Brothers whispering to each other, too softly for Awsten to overhear.

“Just a bit deeper,” Mr. Chester says. “S’more likely that y’all’ll hear the sound at the ol’ grove just ahead.” He turns the boat towards a thicker cluster of bald cypress trees, navigating it through a space just barely wide enough for the boat. Awsten stares at the water as they continue onwards, hoping that nothing will pop its head above the surface.

"These trees are huge," Kevin whispers in awe as Mr. Chester brings them even deeper into the swamp. It’s actually dark in here, as the trees and the moss forms a canopy above their heads. Awsten bites his lip and looks back at Jawn.

“I haven’t seen any alligators yet—” Jawn murmurs.

“Oh fuck!” Joe suddenly cuts him off, jumping in the boat and causing it to rock. Awsten tenses and grabs at his seat, his heart racing.

“What?” Kyle says, his voice panicked.

“I saw one—” Joe says, pointing out at something that looks like a log. “Right there— is that it?” 

“Yeah, that’s a gator,” Mr. Chester says. “Shouldn’t bother us s’long as we leave ‘im alone. Don’t jump too much, yer rockin’ the boat.”

Awsten watches in trepidation as the alligator ducks its head back under the water. A moment later, Kyle points out another one off the opposite side of the boat. It’s far away, but Awsten still feels terribly vulnerable here in the middle of the swamp. 

“How many alligators are there?” Kevin says. 

“Good Lord only knows,” Mr. Chester says. “S’a good sign for y’all if yer thinkin’ the gators are th’ possessed monsters of th’ swamp, huh?”

Awsten laughs nervously. “Yeah. Great.”

This was such a terrible idea. He wants to get back to dry land right the fuck now. Even the fact that they’re in a boat with the Jonas Brothers isn’t enough of an incentive to keep doing this anymore. He hates this so much right now. Fuck. Maybe he’ll wake up at home and this will all be a bad dream that’s warning him not to go ahead with this. 

But the mosquitoes buzzing angrily in his ears and the stifling heat and humidity keep him in the moment, unfortunately.

“This place is incredible,” Nick says, his voice soft. “Isn’t it, Kyle?”

Kyle makes a strangled noise that might be his own nervous laugh. Might also be him losing his mind from being so close to his celebrity crush. Awsten tries to bring his mind back to that instead of the imminent danger surrounding them.

“Uh huh,” Mr. Chester says. “Keep yer ears open in case ya hear it.” And he shuts off the engine.

Awsten grips the edges of his plastic seat and listens intently, even though his own heartbeat is loud as fuck in his skull. The whole boat is quiet for a minute as the sounds of the swamp wash over them. 

No unexplainable music or voices though. A minute ticks by, Awsten alternating between looking around him, watching the water, and examining the expressions of the other people in the boat. Kyle’s nervous but doing his best to hide it behind the camera, Nick looks thoughtful, Joe and Kevin both appear anxious but curious, Mr. Chester has his eyes closed with a peaceful face, and Jawn looks… almost bored. Lucky bastard.

“Well, I think yer gonna be safe,” Mr. Chester finally declares. “Nothin’s out ta’ eat ya up today.”

Awsten slumps back in his seat in relief as Mr. Chester starts the engine again and begins to take them back in the direction they came. 

“I don’t think this place is haunted,” Jawn says.

“Something’s out there,” Nick says, turning around in his seat to look directly back at Jawn. 

Jawn shrugs and turns away. “Yeah. Alligators.”

“Just alligators,” Joe says. 

“Possessed alligators,” Awsten says insistently. He’s not backing down from that theory. 

Jawn snorts. “You wanna go back and find them again so we can check to see if they’re possessed or not?”

“No!” Kyle says. “I, uh, we can just go back. Do, um, do you guys wanna hang out? With us? Like… we could go out for something?”

“We’ve got to get back,” Kevin says apologetically. “Sorry.”

“But hey,” Joe says, stretching out his hand towards Awsten. “If you ever see anything, you know, really unusual or… you know. Supernatural. Ghosts. We’d love to hear about it.”

Awsten blinks. “What?”

“He means,” Kevin says. “We, uh, this kind of stuff is cool, right? It’s a hobby of yours— us too. We’ll definitely check out your YouTube channel after this, and… And, in the future, if you find any evidence of something weird, we’d— yeah, you can call us or something.”

Awsten’s gaze flickers to Kyle, whose mouth is hanging open. This part is definitely getting cut from the video but holy shit. He’s fucking keeping this and probably going to have to deal with Kyle replaying it and crying over it forever. The Jonas Brothers want to keep in touch. For ghost investigation shit.

“Sure,” Awsten says, fighting to keep from smiling too much. He takes out his phone and hands it over to Joe. “Put your numbers in; we’ll text you whenever we put up a new video.” 

 

~~~~

 

_yellowroses: whoa what a surprise! also I think you missed it but there was something at 9:38_

_Travis Riddle: Awsten you told me you almost got eaten by alligators. They didn’t even come close to the boat._

_Alex 3: yeah thats def something at 9:36-9:41. the light fucks it up but I edited it **here** if you wanna check it out_

_Geoff Games: Wow, cool! Got here early this time, thanks for sending me the link right away!_

_fluffypenguinchick: aw kyle looked like he was having a great time!! I love him! !!!_

_Katie: oh my god thats so scary you didnt even notice that thing at 9:39. Right through the gap in that creepy shack_

_kitty: GHOST HUNTING JOBROS_

_CJ: oh my god are the jonas brothers doing a new video channel???_

_Amber: never in a million years did I think I would see kyle from my favorite underground emo band and the jonas brothers in the same place. what is going on_

_evelyn: Nick looking right, calm. Joe looking right, calm. Kevin dying of heat, getting bitten by mosquitoes. lol_

_jonasbaby: came here for the jonas brothers but omggg awsten is SO cute… might have to check out the rest of these videos_

_Khloe: so this is what they do when they’re not doing music…_

_Maggie S: whos austin and john? are they friends of the jonas brothers?_

_JBlove00: god bless the camera guy for all those good shots of Nick_

_TJ: fucking hell I came here causs of kyles tweet and the comments are full of jonas brothers fangirls_

_music gives me life: need to start going on huanted swamp tours if there a chance Im goign to see Jonas brothers_

_hallie: aaaaaa I saw them the day before this was filmed!!!!_

_sleep deprived: did they not catch that shit at 9:38 when they were editing this? what the fukc_


	6. Casey's Arcade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awsten and Jawn (and Kyle) explore the popular Casey's Arcade. Are there really haunted games in there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“No, there’s not going to be any Jonas Brothers in this one,” Awsten says as soon as Kyle has the camera rolling. 

Jawn gives him a look. Awsten shrugs. “Hey, I’m just getting that out of the way first. Sorry, but we had no idea they were showing up last time. We don’t know what their schedules are like.”

Although, they _did_ exchange contact information and Kyle _has_ been nervously texting them every so often. Awsten doesn’t think he’ll be seeing them again anytime soon. They’re ridiculously busy dudes, and he’s glad to have had that one chance to sort of hang out with them. Albeit, it happened at a creepy swamp full of bugs and monster alligators.

“So, this time we’re checking out something way less scary,” Awsten says, waving his arms at the building behind him. 

“Casey’s Arcade,” Jawn says. “I’ve been here like a hundred times. Wait, this place is supposed to be haunted?”

“Yeah,” Kyle says, peeking at them from the other side of the camera. “It’s like… there’s some games that do weird shit when you play them.”

“That’s called a glitched game,” Jawn says.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you’re determined to believe,” Awsten says. “Okay, let’s get inside. We’ve only got like two hours that the owner’s giving us before the place opens. I don’t want to waste it.”

It’s a Monday morning— an early Monday morning— which means Casey’s Arcade is empty save for a manager and the cleaning service that’s already leaving. The manager waves at them and they walk over. The manager is a young guy with shaggy hair, a goatee, and a sloppily tied tie. He’s maybe a little older than Steve, and he walks with surprisingly good posture.

“So, the arcade will be yours until just before eleven,” he says. “The staff will start coming in around ten forty-five, but they’ll stay out of your way. I made sure all the games are turned on for your, uh, investigation. Mr. Casey told me about it.”

“Thank you,” Awsten says. 

The manager glances at the camera in Kyle’s hands. “So… uh. I guess I’ll check out your YouTube channel once you put up the video? I hope you don’t find anything too weird.” He laughs a bit nervously.

“Hopefully not,” Kyle murmurs. 

“I’m hoping we catch something,” Awsten says. “I’ve only played one of the games that people say are haunted.”

“Which one?” Jawn says.

“I’ll tell you when we’re filming it,” Awsten says, waving him off. “Anyway, thank you so much for letting us come in. I really appreciate it.”

The manager nods. “Well, uh. I’ll be in the office back that way if you need anything. Have fun, I guess?”

He leaves them and Awsten and Jawn move in front of the camera again. 

“Okay, we can edit some of that later,” Awsten says. “But okay. I’ll make the history quick, so we’ve got plenty of time to play the haunted games. So we’re in Casey’s Arcade today. It’s a local place near us, and it’s a pretty popular hangout place for, like. Everyone. Kids and teenagers, anyway. And the arcade’s been around since… the nineties at least.”

He points down at the retro carpet. The neon and black lights in the ceiling and around the walls are making the design glow. All around them, the lights and the noises from the games are creating a nice atmosphere— one that would be more fun if there was music playing on the radio. But since the music is off, the arcade feels weirdly empty and slightly off.

“There’s an amazing pizza restaurant that’s connected to the arcade over that way,” Jawn adds. “Also owned by Mr. Casey. It’s part of the reason this place has stayed open, I’m guessing. Not that the arcade isn’t awesome, but some people just come for the pizza.”

Awsten nods. “So… the thing that’s brought us here is the fact that a few of the games in this arcade are haunted.”

Jawn looks skeptical.

Awsten ignores him.

“It’s more than just games glitching. If it was a glitch, it wouldn’t happen so consistently,” Awsten says.

Jawn crosses his arms. “Glitches happen in all sorts of ways, Awsten. Technology isn’t perfect.”

“But that’s the thing,” Awsten says. “Technology is— the energy in appliances and even games like these can be a host for ghosts and spirits that would otherwise be too weak to haunt a place normally.”

“Do you even hear the things you’re saying?” Jawn says incredulously.

“Fuck off, Jawn,” Awsten says. “Okay, let me explain this first. Yeah, maybe these games are glitched. But the repetition of the glitch, even after they’re checked to see if anything is wrong, is the unusual thing. It happens every time. And the games still work just fine, it’s just they do something weird.”

“I know about the Pac-Man one,” Kyle says. “How many others are there?”

“The Pac-Man one is the easiest to notice,” Awsten says. He starts walking in the direction of the game. Belatedly, he feels bad for not inviting Geoff to this investigation. Geoff loves games, and he loves this arcade too. He’d probably make the actual game-playing more enjoyable to watch. Then again, Awsten’s not interested in making a ton of crossovers on his and Jawn’s channel. The Jonas Brothers thing was completely unintentional.

Awsten stops in front of the Pac-Man game. 

“Oh look,” Jawn says, pointing at a little laminated paper sign hanging at the top of the machine. “I never noticed this.”

The sign says ‘WARNING. THIS GAME MAY EXHIBIT STRANGE BEHAVIOR DURING GAMEPLAY. PLEASE BRING ANY CONCERNS TO A MEMBER OF THE STAFF.’

“They’re aware,” Kyle says.

“Is it that strange?” Jawn says, still skeptical.

“Yes,” Awsten says. “Here,” he pulls out the plastic bag of game tokens that Mr. Casey gave him a couple days ago when he came to ask to do the investigation. “Who wants to play it?”

“I’ll do it,” Kyle says. “Jawn, can you take the camera?”

Kyle puts a game token in and starts playing. He’s not half bad, but he’s not a professional gamer like Geoff. Kyle makes it through two games before he gets Pac-Man eaten by a ghost.”

“Okay, here it is,” Awsten says. Jawn comes closer with the camera. The three of them watch as the Game Over screen doesn’t immediately return to the waiting animation. Instead, it’s like a whole new game starts. Pac-Man goes through the maze, eating everything in sight, while the ghosts stay inside their little box in the center. As soon as Pac-Man is done, the screen briefly goes dark, and only then does it return to the animation challenging people to come and play.

“What the fuck?” Jawn says, sounding stunned.

“It does that every time!” Awsten says. “I swear, look up Casey’s Arcade and you’ll find other videos that show the same thing. Every time, after someone loses, the game plays a whole game by itself, with no interference from the ghosts. It’s so fucking weird!”

“Yeah, I was with here with Scott once and we played this game like five times and it did the same thing every time,” Kyle says. He takes the camera back from Jawn. “It’s weird, but it’s also kinda… normal? Like, everyone knows about it. Makes this game one of the more popular ones here.”

“I didn’t know,” Jawn says. “It’s funny, I guess. You know, there’s probably a way to program the machine to do that.”

Awsten rolls his eyes. “The game that it plays by itself goes differently each time. It changes it up. How do you program that into an old-ass machine like this?”

Jawn shrugs. “I’m sure there’s a way. I don’t think this machine is haunted. Either it’s glitched or someone put a lot of effort into making it quirky. It’s cool, though.” He eyes Awsten and huffs out a laugh. “What’s your explanation then?”

Awsten scowls. “I was saying it earlier. Not all ghosts can, you know, manifest themselves physically. So they’re sometimes attracted to items that hold and carry energy like this. Ghosts with stronger energy can make lights flicker and all that shit, but some ghosts just sorta live in those spaces.”

Kyle speaks up. “So what about the internet? Are there ghosts that have just uploaded themselves like a virus?”

“No, you idiot,” Awsten says. “It doesn’t work like that. They need a physical location. And— you’re making me get off topic. Next game.”

The next game on Awsten’s list is the only one he’s actually experienced firsthand. He’s heard of the Pac-Man one, of course, but the game is so popular at the arcade that he’s never actually played it. This one however…

“Nitro Speed Racing?” Kyle says, reading the name on the machine. “Really? This one?”

“I’ve played this game with you,” Jawn says. “Like a dozen times. This is glitched?”

“We’ve only played some of the maps,” Awsten points out. He sits down at one of the seats and Jawn sits down at the other. The game can be played by one person, but the two machines side by side give the option of two players racing. 

“Okay, so this one is really specific,” Awsten says. “It only happens on one map. I looked it up and people say it happens no matter if you’re playing single or two players.”

“Which map?” Jawn says. 

Awsten puts in the game tokens. After confirming that they’ll be playing with two players, the first menu is the map selection. Awsten scrolls through the list to get to the one he wants.

“The gold mine?” Jawn says. 

“What happens in it?” Kyle says.

Awsten and Jawn go through the other menus, choosing their cars and upgrades as Awsten explains. “So on this map, nobody wins. It doesn’t matter how good you are at playing the game. You could make no mistakes, use your upgrades perfectly, and you’ll still lose. There’s one AI car that wins every time. By a fucking mile.”

The game countdown starts and Awsten points the car out. It’s an unassuming light blue car towards the rear of the lineup.

“That one?” Kyle says. 

“Yeah,” Awsten says. “Keep an eye on it, it’s unbelievable.”

They start racing. The blue car zips ahead of them within moments, and it remains ahead, gaining distance with every passing moment. Awsten puts it out of his mind and focuses on racing Jawn instead. He finds himself actually enjoying it, taking the shortcuts that he knows will help, using his upgrades strategically. He crosses the finish line in fourth place, and Jawn comes in sixth. The blue car comes in first, with an unreal time distance between it and the second place car.

“So you’re calling that haunted?” Jawn says. “It’s just a mixup in the game’s programming or something.”

“Again, it happens every time,” Awsten says through gritted teeth. “And they looked into it and said it was fine. It shouldn’t be doing this.”

“The game doesn’t have the warning sign though,” Jawn says, pointing up at the top of the machines. 

“Why don’t you both play as single players?” Kyle suggests. “See if it’s in one of the machines?”

They do that. Awsten plays first, and comes in third, just behind the second place car but with the blue car way ahead in first. Jawn plays next, and comes in sixth place again. The blue car still takes first. They try switching seats, and the results are similar to their first attempt: blue car in first, Awsten in third again, and Jawn in sixth once again.

“It’s just a bad map,” Jawn insists. 

“Maybe,” Awsten admits. “But it might be haunted by a ghost who wants to beat everyone in that blue car.”

“Just on the gold mine map,” Jawn says. “Awsten, it’s just the game.”

“Fine,” Awsten says. He gets up and starts walking towards the third game that he _knows_ is haunted. “This last one is definitely weird though. You’ll see.” 

They stop in front of a shooting game. Not just any shooting game, but a game called Zombie Island Invasion that, from the idle preview, promises plenty of pixelated gore and horrifying scares. Awsten usually stays away from these games because he kind of hates them, but he’s willing to deal with this one today.

“Zombie Island Invasion,” Jawn reads.

“Hey, it’s got the note,” Kyle says. “Although, Awsten, if I have to watch this game play itself, I’m going to be running for the door.”

“No, this one doesn’t do that,” Awsten says. “But it won’t let single players get to level two unless they add a second player. From what I read, it actually has this little notification that says something like ‘you cannot proceed alone’ or some shit like that.”

“So you just play with the two from the start,” Jawn says. He picks up both plastic weapons. “Awsten, put in the game tokens.”

“This feels like cheating,” Awsten mutters, but he puts in the tokens anyway.

Jawn isn’t the greatest player, but he manages with the two weapons firing at the zombies appearing on the screen. Awsten hates watching the screen— especially in the relatively quiet and empty arcade— but he wants to keep his eyes peeled for anything unusual. He’s not sure if this strategy of Jawn’s will work. Whether it does or doesn’t, Awsten’s not really interested in playing it more than once to test it.

There’s more than a few jumpscares and he hates those.

Finally, Jawn reaches the cutscene at the end of the level. He lowers the weapons as the scene plays.

Awsten holds his breath as the game loads the next level. It’s displaying advice (maybe?) on a message sign: CAN YOU RELY ON YOUR FRIEND? Awsten can’t remember if that’s one of the messages the people on the Casey’s arcade forum were talking about. Even if it’s not, it’s still creepy, all things considering. 

Then the second level starts. 

Awsten’s mouth drops open. He rubs at his eyes and looks at it again. 

“Did you see that?” Kyle says.

“What?” Jawn says, too busy playing. 

“Was there— are you talking about the loading message?” Awsten asks, confused.

“No,” Kyle says. “There was something— it was like a message at the top. Or… I don’t know, it might have just been something in the game. It was only there for, like, a second. Or less. I couldn’t catch what it was.”

“I’ll see if I can see it when I edit it,” Jawn says. He lets his character die and puts the weapons down. The screen plays a spooky scene as it ends. Awsten doesn’t bother to catch it.

“Okay, so that one was a bust,” Jawn says.

Awsten shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Do you want to try playing with one?” Jawn suggests.

“No.”

“Kyle?”

“No thanks,” Kyle says. “Um. Actually, since we’ve still got the place to ourselves for… about another hour… can we play some non-haunted stuff? Unless there’s more you want to investigate, Awsten?”

Awsten looks at Kyle. His twin is looking around the large room, at all the games around them. Awsten sighs. Yeah, okay, he can end the investigation part here. Really, the Pac-Man game is probably the only haunted game, due to its very unusual activity. There are a few more games that act up like Nitro Speed Racing and Zombie Island Invasion, but he knows Jawn will just continue to insist it’s nothing strange.

“What do you want to play?” Awsten asks Kyle. 

Kyle brightens up immediately. 

They follow Kyle to the row of Skee-Ball games, and play (and win) enough for Kyle to be happy. They’ve been collecting tickets playing all of these games, which Kyle has been stuffing into his camera bag. Their first round of Skee-Ball alone gets them way more tickets than all of the previous games combined. It makes Awsten excited, and he drags Jawn back over to the racing games next.

“This one I _know_ isn’t haunted,” he says to Jawn as he puts their tokens in for Princess Power Racing. “And I’m fucking awesome at it.”

“Do you play it every time you come here?” Jawn says. 

The game is brightly colored, but it’s fast paced. It’s not as easy as it looks either. Awsten knows all the ins and outs of each map, and he breaks into a big smile as he passes his competition. The scenery is cute and all, but the real fun is the racetrack. It’s got ramps, optional tunnels, and obstacles that demand quick problem-solving but don’t completely ruin the enjoyment of the game. 

“Yeah, but it’s cool,” he says in answer to Jawn. “There’s no power-ups or anything; it’s just skill.”

He wins easily, and the first place tickets are pretty damn satisfying. Jawn admits it’s more fun than the Nitro game. It’s not hard to talk him into another game.

Meanwhile, Kyle wanders away. After Awsten beats Jawn at Princess Power Racing again, they get up to find him playing a fairly easy basketball game. The camera is off, sitting on the floor near Kyle’s feet. Awsten picks it up and turns it on just in time to catch Kyle scoring in the basket. 

“Are you pretending to be a jock?” he asks.

Kyle looks over his shoulder. “Hey! You don’t need to be filming me!”

Awsten laughs and moves out of reach. “You keep going. I want all your December’s Tragedy fans to see the true Kyle Knight. He’s a huge jock, guys.”

Kyle misses the next shot. Jawn claps and cheers for him.

“He did that on purpose,” Awsten stage-whispers.

“I hate you,” Kyle groans. “Both of you.” He finishes the game with more points than Awsten or Jawn would be able to score, and takes his tickets. “Okay, what do you want to do now? We’re done with the creepy ones, right?”

“Yeah,” Awsten says, glancing at Jawn.

Jawn looks around. “It’s weird not having the music playing. Every time I’m here, it’s so much louder than this. I guess some of that’s the other people too. It feels like a different place when it’s empty like this.”

Awsten shifts where he’s standing. He has to agree with Jawn: it doesn’t exactly feel… spooky like the other places they’ve been. But it definitely doesn’t feel like how Casey’s Arcade usually feels. He loves coming here, but he’s not getting the same kinds of vibes as normal. Not even while playing Princess Power Racing. 

“I guess we can finish early,” Awsten says. “We’ve got the footage I wanted anyway. Ugh… there’s going to be so much extra stuff of us just goofing around.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Jawn assures him. Awsten’s relieved at that. Editing these videos takes forever, and when Jawn stepped up for the third video and offered to take over, Awsten was more than happy to hand the reins over. Awsten’s watched the third, fourth, and fifth videos straight from YouTube since then. It’s what works best.

“Whoa!” Kyle suddenly says. “Look at those things in the claw machine!”

Awsten stops walking and looks where Kyle is facing. 

Oh.

Oh, they’re unicorns. 

It’s kind of silly but… but Awsten wants one. 

“Turn off the camera for a minute,” he tells Kyle, already digging out one of the quarters he put in his pocket earlier just in case they ran out of tokens for the arcade games. The claw machines won’t take tokens, but they will take quarters.

“Sure,” Kyle says.

Awsten tries his best to catch one of the unicorns with the claw. It moves, but his first attempt fails to grab it. He tries again and the claw grabs it, but not securely enough to lift it up.

“Fuck!” Awsten says, stomping his foot. “I hate these things!”

“Let me try,” Jawn says. He puts in a quarter and moves the claw over the unicorn that Awsten’s been trying to catch.

Kyle snorts. “Yeah, this’ll be a good way to finish up the last, what, twenty-five minutes before the place opens?”

The claw drops down and closes around the unicorn. And it lifts it up. Awsten can’t move. All he can do is stare, eyes wide, as the claw brings the unicorn over to the corner of the machine and drops it into the chute.

“YOU DID IT!” Awsten screams. Jawn takes the unicorn out and holds it out to Awsten. Awsten just throws his arms around Jawn, bouncing on his feet. “THANK YOU! THANK YOU!”

“You’re welcome,” Jawn says. 

“And… I got all of that on video,” Kyle says smugly.

Awsten lets go of Jawn like he’s on fire. “What!” he yells. He grabs the camera out of Kyle’s hands. He turns off the recording and takes the camera bag away from Kyle too. 

“Hey, it was cute,” Kyle says.

“No more recording,” Awsten says. With the camera bag safely on his shoulder, he turns to take the unicorn from Jawn. “Thanks. For this.”

Jawn smiles. “No problem. If you want, I can try and get another one.”

Awsten pets the unbelievably soft plush unicorn. It’s white, with a purple mane and tail, a silver horn, and a glittery silver bow around its neck. It’s so cute. He loves it.

“No, I like this one,” he says. “Um…” He looks around them. There’s not really much else that he wants to do on this investigation-turned-hanging-out. His eyes land on one game. He gives it a second’s thought, and then decides, sure. Why not.

“I’m going to beat Kyle at air hockey before we leave,” he announces.

Kyle groans. “You cheat at air hockey.”

“You can’t cheat at air hockey,” Awsten retorts. “Look, I won’t even get Jawn to record it, so your fans don’t have any proof that you’re not actually a jock.”

“I’m not a jock,” Kyle says.

Awsten and Kyle play air hockey until the staff come in. Awsten beats Kyle, just like both of them knew he would. When they finally leave, Awsten’s feeling elated for once, and it’s not just because he’s leaving a haunted location. It’s because he’s actually had a lot of fun.

 

~~~~

_Geoff Games: Awsten I can’t believe you went to Casey’s without me!!!_

_awsten &jawn: @Geoff Games blame awsten for not inviting you. -jawn_

_Amber: WHO HERE HAS LISTENED TO MISTER MAGIC TRICKS SOUND OFF_

_yellowroses: um. someone please tell me they’re seeing the message on the zombie game too, rihgt? I know kyle said something_

_Alex3: @yellowroses ya kyle pointed it out. Didnt they see it while editing_

_Katie: @yellowroses @Alex3 what are you talking about?_

_Maggie S: jawns hair is so cute_

_yellowroses: ITS GONE NOW_

_Alex3: what the fuck??? @awsten &jawn ???_

_Katie: @yellowroses wait is it just gone? What did it say?_

_rhybaby: I dont know who any of these people are but the guy with the peach blonde hair can get it_

_yellowroses: @Alex3 omgggg I saved it cause I wanted to zoom in to see if there was anythign but omggg_

_yellowroses: @Katie Im pretty sure it said "I SEE YOU J" but it was blurry_

_Alex3: @yellowroses did you also save that noise when jawn’s doing the claw machine? Its subtle but I got it because I was trying to figure out if there was a way to clean it up_

_yellowroses: @Alex3 NO I MISSED THAT NOOO_

_fluffypenguinchick: stream mr magic tricks by december’s tragedy!!!!_

_Alex3: @yellowroses its ok I got it._

_Katie: @Alex3 can you share that stuff? whats your twitter_

_CJ: aw no jonas brothers :( this was still fun tho :)_

_jjjustdanceee: STREAM MISTER MAGIC TRICKS_

_missmagictricks: stream mr magic tricks by december’s tragedy!!! :)_

_yellowroses: @Katie sure but I dont have twitter. are you on discord?_

_sleep deprived: damn, last time they didt edit the weirdshit out and now they edit it after its up?_

_TJ: didnt check the link before I clicked, thought this was a video for mr magic trick, rip. its good tho_

_Alex3: @yellowroses if you make a groupchat, I can share the video too_

_Katie: @yellowroses oooo can you make a whole server??_

_nopizzas: idk whats going on but it sounds cool??_

_yellowroses: okay I made a server to share this stuff, whoever wants to join, the invite link is **here**_

_Katie: @yellowroses thank you!!!_

_CJ: I wanna join!_

_Arachne00: count me in, this is my shit_

_jonasbaby: omgomg Im getting invested in this now…. I feel like theres a mystery in here somewhere_

_X: yeah thanks yellow!_

_Travis Riddle: My original comment got deleted for some reason? I guess I’ll play along then._


	7. Glass Street Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glass Street Art is a newer building compared to the last locations Awsten and Jawn have investigated… but have ghosts already moved in?

“What’s up YouTube?” Awsten says. “It’s Awsten and Jawn, and we’re back again with another haunted place for you guys!”

“In the daytime again,” Jawn says. His hands are stuffed into his pockets as he squints up at the bright sun overhead. 

“Yeah,” Awsten says. “And it’s not a gross old place like the fucking Miller house. This place is called Glass Street Art, and it’s supposedly haunted with ghosts.”

It’s a beautifully modern place. A perfectly normal and unassuming structure that could be a residence or an office building, set right between a library and a cafe in a beautifully quiet corner of town. It’s probably the most relaxing place Awsten’s picked so far. Casey’s Arcade was fun, but it felt weird being so empty. Glass Street Art is the least scary place he’s decided on for his YouTube series, but he thinks he deserves a few nice places among all the horrifying ones. 

“Is it?” Jawn says, looking behind him at the art gallery. “It looks like it’s ten years old, max.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Awsten says. “Ghosts don’t have to be attracted to old places, sometimes, there’s just something about a place that lures them in.”

“What, like a ghost mousetrap? Is there ghost bait too?” Kyle says sarcastically.

Awsten rolls his eyes. “Yeah, once we get enough money to buy that, I’m covering you in it. Then Jawn gets to be the cameraman.” 

Jawn perks up at that. 

“Fucking ghost bait,” Kyle mutters. “We should have used that at the swamp.”

“Anyway,” Awsten says loudly, getting the attention back on the investigation. “Why don’t we go inside?”

Jawn reaches for the door first and holds it open for Awsten and Kyle. Awsten smiles again at seeing all the nice bright lights. This place is so nice. He’s so happy to be here. 

“Alright, so what’s the story, Ghosten?” Kyle says once the three of them are in place.

Awsten’s smile drops. “Ghosten?”

“Yeah that’s your new nickname. The Scary Adventures of Ghosten Knight and Jawn Rocha.”

“No,” Awsten says immediately. “Or I’ll start call you Kyle _Fletchers_ again.”

Kyle blanches. “Okay, okay, fine. No Ghosten. So what’s the story about this place?”

“Was there another building here before the art gallery?” Jawn says. He’s looking straight at Awsten, instead of looking around at all the gorgeous photos and paintings on the walls, which is appreciated. He actually seems interested. It’s really nice, actually. Awsten shifts on his feet and looks back at Jawn, excited to get started.

“No, it wasn’t anything interesting before this. This part of town was, like, farmland or something before it got bought and turned into what it is now.”

“Farms can be haunted,” Kyle says.

Jawn scoffs. 

Awsten hesitates. Maybe the land _was_ haunted… He should have investigated that. He’s glad Jawn has taken over looking through the comments (and helping him edit the videos), so he doesn’t have to read anyone complaining about that kind of oversight. 

“Well… I don’t think it was,” he says, a little unsure. “The ghost activity that’s been reported here doesn’t exactly suggest farm ghosts. Or ghosts that would live on a farm, anyway.”

“What’s the activity like?” Jawn says.

“It’s not too bad. Whispers, gusts of wind, and—”

“Awsten,” Jawn sighs. 

“Let me finish! Gusts of wind, and cold spots!”

“You know, this is a building full of random walls to display art, right?” Jawn says. “Drafts happen. And there’s this thing called air conditioning—”

“Yeah, shut up,” Awsten says. “Nobody’s actually investigated this place yet to prove what’s happening. We can be the first.”

As nice as it would be to catch proof of a ghost in a less scary place, Awsten thinks he’d much rather enjoy a quiet and uneventful investigation. Glass Street Art is just so perfect and unthreatening. It’s the kind of place that Awsten doubts he’d ever go on his own, but it’s different doing it as an investigation. Or maybe it’s different because he’s got his twin and his friend with him. Maybe a mixture of both.

Briefly, he imagines what it’d be like if Kyle wasn’t here and it was just him and Jawn. 

“Anything else about this place before we start hunting for breeze-causing ghosts?” Kyle says. 

Jawn looks at Awsten expectantly. 

Awsten momentarily forgets his notes. “Um. Yeah. This place. Yeah. So Glass Street Art… yeah, it’s pretty much a gallery for local artists. From what I know, it shows a pretty wide variety of photography and paintings and stuff.” It’s what he got from skimming through the website, that is. “The rumors about it being haunted have been around since shortly after the gallery opened about eleven years ago. But nobody’s ever been hurt by whatever haunts this place. If there is a ghost, it’s either not very powerful or it’s not angry or anything.”

A nice harmless ghost. Or just a nice drafty art gallery. Awsten’s happy with either possibility.

“So… that’s all I’ve got on it,” Awsten concludes. “Uh… I guess we can start walking around?”

“There’s two floors?” Jawn says, turning to face the start of the gallery. 

“Yeah,” Awsten says. “But only half of the upper floor is for the gallery. The rest is storage and office stuff.” The owner of the gallery had told Awsten that she’d be in there while they were doing their investigation. Remembering that, Awsten’s hoping they don’t actually see a ghost, because he can’t promise himself that he won’t lose his fucking mind and scream upon seeing it.

“These are cool,” Jawn says, staring at a series of nature photographs. “I want to try photography.”

“You should take pictures of people,” Kyle suggests. “Start with Awsten. I’m sure he’d love to model for you.”

Awsten quickly turns away to stare intently at a charcoal sketch of a cat. 

“Would you?” Jawn says.

“I don’t know.” Awsten says. “Maybe. Uh. Let’s keep going. I want to see more art.”

Kyle snickers audibly. Awsten’s going to kill him later. He’s going to kill him and have to bribe Otto to help him hide the body. How hard would it be to convince his parents to let Gracie come out to these places and film for him instead? 

...yeah that isn’t happening.

The art is pretty good, actually. Awsten forgets about ghosts for a few minutes as they proceed slowly through the gallery, stopping to admire the work put into some of the paintings. He would consider buying some of them if he had the money to spare. 

Jawn breaks into a soft laugh at a large watercolor at the foot of the stairs. “Look,” he says, pointing at the birds in it. “It’s you. See, that one’s you, that one’s Kyle, that little one is Gracie, and that upside-down one is Steve.”

Awsten looks at the painting. He can see it, honestly. Two of the birds are poking at each other with their claws and beaks while a smaller bird is watching them with an expression uncannily similar to Gracie. The final bird is separate from the others, hanging upside down from a thin tree branch with its wings out for balance and an unidentifiable insect in its beak. It’s kind of silly. 

It’s also priced at over five hundred dollars. 

Damn it. One day Awsten’s going to be rich enough to come back and buy that painting. Hopefully his YouTube thing gets popular soon. 

He takes a step towards the stairs and a breeze hits him. He stops.

“You guys felt that?” Awsten says.

“Yeah, I felt it,” Kyle says.

“We’re right next to a staircase in a mostly-empty building,” Jawn says. “Of course it’s going to be drafty.”

There’s another draft as they start up the stairs, but Awsten can’t feel concerned about it with the bright sunlight coming in through a skylight above them.

“Okay, yeah, that’s probably just a draft,” he says when they reach the upstairs landing. 

“What else do people experience? Echos?” Jawn says.

Awsten hums. “Yeah.” 

Jawn looks thoughtful. “Hey Kyle, go downstairs again. We’ll move around up here and talk quietly. And then we can see if it sounds like ghosts.”

Kyle starts to move, but then he stops. “Should I leave the camera with you?”

Jawn shakes his head and reaches back into his pocket. “No, we’ll be going back to these for this.” He takes out his phone and— presumably— starts recording. 

Awsten groans. “The quality on that is so shitty compared to the real camera,” he says.

Jawn offers him a smile. “Just for a bit. We can put the two videos side by side.”

Kyle goes back down the stairs. Awsten and Jawn wait until they can’t hear his footsteps anymore, and then they start moving. 

“I don’t hear the floor creaking,” Jawn says.

“No, ‘cause this place isn’t old,” Awsten agrees. “I haven’t heard that creaks are a part of the ghost activity— just drafts and whispers.”

“And cold spots,” Jawn says. He laughs. “Can’t forget those.”

“Whatever,” Awsten says. Some of the cold spots they’ve walked into so far have been legit. He’s still convinced that the ones in the Conrad House weren’t more of the tourist gimmicks. Those weren’t just blasts of cold air; they had a weird sensation to them.

“Is this top floor all skeleton paintings?” Jawn says. 

Awsten stops and looks around him. He sees a painting of a skull with flowers, a painting of two skeletons lying on the ground facing each other like lovers gone to sleep, a skeleton sitting at a table with a cup of steaming coffee, and another skull with flowers, but these flowers are dry and dead. And there’s even more. All skeletons, from what he can see. Different poses, different content, but they’re all skeletons, and they’re all the same style.

“Uh…” Awsten says. “I guess so.”

“Someone really likes painting skeletons,” Jawn says. He walks closer to one of the larger paintings— a pair of skeletons dancing across a shadowed floor. Both are wearing flower crowns, and their faces are grinning at each other. It’s a weird way to show intimacy, but Awsten gets it.

“That’s cute,” Jawn says. 

Awsten looks at the painting right beside it. It’s a skull with a butterfly perched on top of it. It’s not bad, but it’s not exactly his cup of tea. Personally, he thinks this investigation would be more fun if the top floor was full of dog pictures.

They look around a little more, but they quickly run out of places to walk. 

“You think Kyle’s heard anything?” Awsten asks Jawn as they go back down the stairs. 

Jawn makes a noncommittal noise. “If he has, it’s just echoes from us moving around. I don’t think you’re going to get much from this place. Maybe if it was night—”

“No.” Awsten says.

Jawn smirks at him. “What, you don’t want to be jumping at every noise you hear in the dark?”

Awsten picks up his pace and stomps away from him. He needs to get another guest on this fucking ghost hunting show. He’s tired of being mocked by both Kyle and Jawn. He needs someone on his side, someone who believes in ghosts and shit.

Kyle’s in the last room that Awsten and Jawn haven’t gone into yet. He waves at them as they approach. “Hey! I’ve got good news, Awsten!”

“No echoes?” Awsten asks.

“No, I got echoes,” Kyle says. “But I’ve heard your voice enough to be able to pick it out even when it’s, like, warped by the acoustics of this place. It’s just all the walls in here. I bet if you mess with the audio, you can even hear people from outside.”

“Cool,” Awsten says. 

Jawn turns his camera phone off and puts it back in his pocket. “Alright. So the mystery’s solved. Ghosts aren’t real.”

“No,” Awsten and Kyle both say at the same time.

“Ghosts are still real,” Awsten says. “They’re just not in here.”

“Yeah, what he said,” Kyle says. “This place doesn’t feel haunted anyway. Maybe in fifty years, it will be, but not now.”

Jawn tilts his head at them. “Huh. Hey, I’ve found another picture that captures the two of you exactly.”

He points at a photograph of a pair of little dogs wearing jester costumes. They’re so adorable that Awsten instantly has to look at the price. Two hundred dollars. Fuck. He’s got about ten percent of that in his wallet right now.

“That’s you two,” Jawn says.

Awsten grabs Jawn and wrestles him into a light chokehold. “Are you saying that we’re a pair of dogs?”

Jawn makes fake choking noises, but he’s laughing. “No, you’re fools! Because you believe in ghosts!”

“Yeah, well, the skeletons upstairs are going to be you when a ghost eats you at whatever place we investigate next!” Awsten says.

~~~~

_yellowroses: this was interesting! I guess not every place that people say is haunted is too bad_

_Maggie S: jawn is so cute in this video_

_darkstar: you guys have a good series going. is it an arg?_

_Alex 3: @darkstar it might be?? Check out our discord server here if you want to see what weve got as of now. Theres not much yet_

_Katie: I didn’t notice anything weird and I got here right away. The videos fun though!!!_

_sleepdeprived: @Katie yeah its cool but maybe theyre building up fr somethng_

_Arachne00: @sleepdeprived :O_

_Travis Riddle: If you went there while it was dark, I bet you’d get some creepy content. Spend a night with the skeletons upstairs._

_Geoff Games: Thanks for another great video guys! :D_

_R€UNION: BRING ON ST€VE AS A GUEST!!!!!!!!_

_fluffypenguinchick: I love this series’s theme!! I love kyle so much_

_bigcheese: not sure if this is a ghost investigation series or something else but its good_

_Softcore Horrorgirl: Please Go Somewhere Super Scary Next!_

_dankmemesdaily: nice intro_


	8. Lupton's Grocery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We investigate Lupton’s Grocery, a haunted abandoned convenience store so scary that everyone here avoids it. 
> 
> I’m aware that the video quality goes bad in a few spots. Jawn and I looked through all the footage and we’re not sure what happened. It might be ghosts, so just in case, Kyle’s taking the camera to a repair shop to see if there’s any damage. - Awsten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry christmas yall

“Now this place, I know about,” Jawn says. His flashlight’s beam moves slowly back and forth across the storefront: the half-boarded half-broken glass doors and windows, the dirty and graffiti-covered bricks, and the street litter lying at the base of the building. It’s oddly cold tonight, so Awsten’s glad he’s wearing his warm sweater. He’s got the sleeves pulled down to cover his hands which are clutching his own flashlight. 

It sucks that they’re doing another night investigation, he thinks. 

“Lupton’s Grocery. I’ve heard a lot about how creepy and gross it is,” Jawn continues. “It’s been abandoned for, what, five years?”

“Yeah,” Awsten says. “It actually closed six years ago, after being open for almost thirty years. I think that it was because the location wasn’t good anymore.” There’s not a lot of traffic in this area anymore, and a couple of places nearby have been torn down in the past few years. It’s probably only a matter of time before the grocery faces that fate as well.

“Could have been bad management too,” Kyle says. “Or the ghosts.”

“Or the ghosts,” Awsten agrees. 

Jawn turns towards Awsten. “Was it haunted before it was abandoned?”

Awsten shrugs. “Maybe. I think so. When I was reading up on this place, I found past employees talking about how it felt weird to them. And some customers too. People say they’ve seen ghosts, but all of the stories are different, so it’s hard to tell if they’re telling the truth or just feeding to the rumors.”

“But there are a lot of those rumors,” Kyle says. “So there must be some truth under it all.”

Awsten nods. “Alright, so… you two know about it, but people on YouTube might not, so I’ll go through all the stuff that I know.”

“Out here, or in there?” Jawn says, gesturing to the store.

Awsten looks at the door waiting for them a few yards away. Hesitantly, he points his flashlight so the light shines into the darkness beyond. The light is swallowed up by the shadows, and he can’t see anything at all inside. Unsettled, he lowers the flashlight to point at the ground again.

“Out here,” he says. “I’ll make it quick. Okay. So… Lupton’s Grocery. Mr. Lupton, the owner, says it’s not haunted and it never was haunted. But a bunch of employees throughout the years have complained about it. The place has a creepy feeling to it, apparently. And there’s always been cold spots throughout the place. Not just near the refrigerators or air conditioning vents, but in random places in the store. Also, the doors to the freezer and the storeroom would jam and cause employees to be stuck inside until someone came to help them out.”

“Oh my god,” Kyle says in a whisper.

Jawn steps a bit closer to the broken door. “How old is the building? Stuck doors have reasonable explanations, you know. If this place is like a hundred years old, then I doubt it’s ghosts.”

Awsten sighs. “It’s been around for like sixty years, but it changed ownership a lot before the grocery store. I couldn’t find a lot about that.”

Jawn nods. “Sixty years… okay.” 

“Okay, and then after it closed, nobody would— hey, what are you doing? Not yet— I’m not done!” Awsten leaps forward to grab Jawn before he can push his way into the store. 

Jawn tries to pull out of Awsten’s grip. “Come on. We can finish it up inside. I don’t want anyone seeing us out here and calling the cops.”

Awsten protests, but Jawn tugs away and is halfway inside before he can stop him. Awsten turns back to Kyle in hopes of some solidarity, but his brother just offers him a small shrug and follows after Jawn. Awsten remains outside. He looks back up at the peeling paint and shivers. He can’t get his feet to move. He looks through the half-open door, at Jawn illuminating the interior of the store with his flashlight and Kyle filming. Okay. It’s… maybe not as scary with a little bit of light. And at least there’s three of them.

Awsten ducks his head under a low board across the doorway and walks inside. Right away, he notes the similarities with the Miller place. The graffiti, the garbage, the leaves and dirt that’s blown in from outside. There’s also like a million pieces of broken glass all over the floor. Awsten steps carefully over them and keeps an eye out for anything on the floor that he might trip over. The shelves are all empty, and several of them have been broken. Easy enough to avoid. He’s relieved there’s no six-year-old cans and shit lying around like in some post apocalyptic scene.

“We’re not going to run into anyone else here, are we?” Jawn says. 

“No,” Kyle answers in place of Awsten. “Nobody squats in here or anything. People come in here on dares— I know Scott did that once. But it’s too creepy to spend the night on your own choice. I don’t think people even do drug deals here.”

Awsten frowns. “We’re going to have to cut that out. I don’t think YouTube is going to appreciate that fact.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to explain it to Jawn,” Kyle says. 

“So it’s just cause it feels creepy?” Jawn says, walking just as carefully as Awsten around the store area. “I get that, but it’s also dark and empty. You said there’s cold spots?”

Awsten hugs his body with one arm while he points his flashlight around him. It’s bad enough that it’s cold, and he definitely feels freaked out already. It’s not just from the broken shelves and graffiti all around him. “Yeah. I guess if we walk around we might run into something ghost-related?”

“So there’s no specific ghosts we’re looking for again,” Jawn says. “Unless one of the employees died in that thirty year period. Awsten?”

“No,” Awsten mutters. “Not that I know of.”

“Huh,” Jawn says. He clears his throat. “Hey! Ghosts!” 

Awsten’s eyes go wide.

No. Jawn had better not be about to do what Awsten thinks he’s about to do.

“Listen, Awsten hasn’t shown me any ghosts at these places yet, and I still don’t think they’re real. And he really wants to see something scary to prove it to me, so it’d be great if you could come and mess around with us—”

“No I don’t!” Awsten yells, bolting across the room to grab Jawn and put his hand over his mouth. “Stop that. I want to see _evidence_ , I don’t want them to, like, kill us.”

As Awsten releases him, Jawn has the most annoyingly smug expression on his face. “Awsten—”

“No,” Awsten says. He lets go of Jawn and shivers. Despite getting so panicked just now over Jawn’s declaration, he’s still cold. The grocery store is freezing. It’s also silent and fucking dark as hell and it’s starting to wear at his nerves. Awsten tries to shake the fear creeping into his chest.

“It’s an abandoned building,” Jawn says. “The Miller place was _just_ like this. And all those places in the swamp. Old abandoned places are like this. Dirty and gross and freaky, because there’s supposed to be light and people and shit, and it’s just empty instead. It messes with your head.”

Awsten tries to let those words sink into him. It should help, but he’s still terrified that some awful ghost is going to jump out at them or collapse the roof on them. Nervous, he flicks his flashlight up to look at the ceiling. Most of the overhead lights are broken, leaving broken glass holes just above their heads.

“I hate that,” Awsten says. 

“Yeah, so let’s get through this place as fast as we can,” Kyle says. His shoes crunch over a particularly large patch of broken glass. “Where to first? Is that the kitchen over there?”

“Yeah, looks like,” Jawn says, aiming his flashlight at the right wall of the store, where it leads back into a narrow kitchen area. There’s two or three broken display cases nearby, which probably once held fresh deli stuff or baked goods. 

It looks even darker in the little kitchen space. The reminder hits Awsten that, somewhere in the kitchen, there’s a freezer from hell that used to lock employees inside. Terrifying. Awsten looks at Jawn, who actually seems sympathetic. “You wanna keep looking around in this space first?” he asks Awsten.

Awsten glances around him. “Uh… no, we can keep going.” He starts walking towards the kitchen, keeping an eye on the debris on the floor. He’s pretty damn glad that it’s dark and that Kyle can’t catch the fear that’s no doubt written all over Awsten’s face right now.

The kitchen is narrow. It’s barely a hallway with gaps along the wall where cooking equipment and prep tables used to be. There are some shelves at head level that still remain, as well as a cabinet attached to the wall right before three doors in a row at the far end of the kitchen. Awsten stands still and Jawn stops next to him.

“Which one is the freezer?” Kyle says behind the two of them.

“I don’t know,” Awsten says. “I guess… we’ll have to check each one?”

Nobody moves. Awsten can’t tear his eyes away from the doors. His and Jawn’s combined flashlight beams are illuminating all three at once, and they almost look menacing.

CRASH!

Awsten screams and jumps straight into Jawn. Jawn catches him and they whirl around to look behind them. Their flashlight beams shake, going from Kyle, who looks just as shocked as Awsten’s feeling, to the kitchen space behind. They look around wildly, and Awsten’s half-expecting to see an animal or a murderer or maybe the angry ghost of Mr. Lupton or— 

“Oh.” Jawn says, his flashlight settling on something on the floor that wasn’t there before.

A shelf has fallen off the wall. Awsten stares at it. After a few seconds, another shelf falls right next to it with a similarly loud crash. 

Nobody says anything for a long moment.

“That wasn’t— that wasn’t a ghost,” Kyle says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself. “It’s just old, right?”

“Fuck,” Jawn mutters. Awsten realizes that Jawn’s still holding him, and he extracts himself quickly. “Stay away from the walls. Awsten, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Awsten says shakily. “Uh. Let’s keep going.” His feet move him forward, and before he realizes it, he’s at the first door. He pushes it open.

It’s a bathroom. No, actually, it’s the most disgusting remains of a bathroom that Awsten’s ever seen. Kyle reaches out and shuts it before he can do much more than point his flashlight inside and say ‘gross.’

“Wrong door,” Kyle says. 

“That was disgusting,” Jawn says. 

“Ugh,” Awsten says. “Okay, I can’t imagine the freezer will be much worse than that.”

They move on to the second door. Jawn pulls it open.

It’s a closet. There’s a broken broom inside, and a dirty mop leaning in the corner. It’s not gross or scary, and Awsten feels a bit less scared as he and Jawn point their flashlights around at all the dark corners, finding nothing but a couple of old cobwebs.

“This isn’t so bad,” Awsten says. He steps back and Jawn shuts the door. They walk a few more feet to the third and final door. It’s much bigger and heavier-looking. It’s also made of metal, and it looks like it’s been hit a bunch of times, leaving dozens of dents. People have written all over it, and most of the graffiti implies that this is the hell freezer.

Awsten grimaces and, a moment later, an unbelievable chill passes over him. 

God damn it. 

“I’m not going in there,” he declares.

Jawn looks at him. “Why not? You want to see—”

“I’ll hold it open for you so it doesn’t eat you alive,” Awsten says, thinking fast. “You and Kyle can go in and look around.”

“Oh thank god,” Kyle says. 

Jawn shrugs. “Alright.”

Awsten reaches out and grabs the door handle. It’s impossibly cold, so he stops and pulls his sleeve over his hand before returning to pull it open. It takes more effort than he first estimated, and he huffs as he finally manages to yank it open. Jawn and Kyle walk past and Awsten stands with his back against the door to hold it open. 

Unfortunately, he sees a small problem as soon as Jawn and Kyle enter the room.

There’s another door inside, past empty shelves and a floor covered in broken pieces of stuff.

“Is it like a refrigerator inside a refrigerator?” Kyle says.

“That must be the freezer, and we’re in the refrigerator part,” Jawn says. “So—”

“I’m not going in,” Awsten says. The door to the refrigerator was already hard enough to get open. 

“Okay, you wait there,” Jawn says. He reaches for the other door handle and pulls hard on it. It doesn’t budge. 

“Okay, we tried, let’s go see something else,” Awsten says. “Come on out of there.”

“Awsten, no, we need to see if there’s a ghost in here,” Jawn says. The door opens, slowly. Kyle stands right next to Jawn. When Awsten points his flashlight at him, he can see how pale his brother is. 

“Here,” Jawn says, once the door is finally open. “I can see how people get stuck in the freezer now. It’s probably just because this door is heavy. Kyle, are you going in?”

Kyle makes a noise that sounds like he’s about to cry. “Do I have to?”

Jawn groans. “Fine, film from the door. I’ll go in.”

“Don’t close the door on him,” Awsten says.

“I’m not going to!” Kyle says. He leans against the freezer door, and Awsten keeps his flashlight on him as Jawn disappears from view.

Awsten hates this. Why did he pick this place? Why is he even doing this YouTube channel? He thinks it started out as him wanting to prove to Jawn that ghosts are real, but this isn’t worth it. Somehow it’s turned into him standing in one of the creepiest places ever, and he hates it. He should have just gotten out a Ouija board or something. 

“Okay, there’s nothing,” Jawn finally says. “Nothing but gross spiders. I’m coming out now.”

Awsten’s chest feels lighter as he watches Jawn appear. He can breathe much easier when all three of them are out of the refrigerator and back in the kitchen. He can breathe even easier when they gather back in the main room of the grocery store. 

“So what’s the other place that scares people?” Jawn says.

“The storeroom,” Awsten says. He looks around the empty store and finds two more doors in the corner. Thankfully, one of them still has a sign hanging on the front that says ‘Office.’ Awsten points his flashlight to the other one. “It’s that one.”

“Is the office haunted?” Kyle says. 

“Probably,” Awsten says. “This whole place feels weird to you, right? It’s probably the same in there.”

“The refrigerator was worse,” Kyle mutters.

“It was colder in there,” Jawn says. “But those are designed to keep cold, right? It’s creepy, but it’s not because of ghosts. We haven’t even felt any cold spots or anything.”

“I felt a cold spot back in the kitchen, actually,” Awsten says.

Jawn and Kyle both look at him, Jawn skeptical and Kyle rattled. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jawn says.

“I was freaking out,” Awsten says.

“I felt a cold spot when we were in the refrigerator,” Kyle says quietly. “But I— I was scared too.”

Jawn frowns. “Huh. I haven’t felt anything yet. If you feel another one, tell me.”

“Yeah,” Awsten says. 

He leads the way across the empty grocery store to the storeroom door. Oddly enough, the door opens easily. It doesn’t creak ominously. It doesn’t even feel heavy. It just feels like a normal door. Awsten holds it open, looking at the door with considerable mistrust. 

“Jawn, can you hold the door open for me and Kyle this time?” Awsten says. 

“Sure,” Jawn says. 

Awsten takes a deep breath and walks inside. Kyle walks in after him. He moves his flashlight around and slows down when he notices just how big the storeroom is. He can’t exactly see the end of it from this door, and there are a lot more tall shelves blocking his view. 

“Watch that stuff on the floor,” Kyle says.

“Yeah. I’ll go first,” Awsten says. “Go slow.” Kyle doesn’t have a flashlight, so it’s up to him to keep them both from tripping over all of this stuff. He walks slowly and deliberately, stopping when he steps on something that creaks. 

It’s a lot more cluttered in this room than anywhere else in the store. Besides the shelves, there are piles of broken crates, piles of old ceiling plaster— Awsten looks up to see a huge gaping hole in the ceiling where it’s caved in— pieces of broken glass, an old tire for some reason, and mounds of old garbage and junk that Awsten’s assuming is originally from the store. Or it’s from people trying to spend the night in here and giving up. 

“Scott got dared to go in here?” Awsten asks Kyle, partially for the sake of hearing something besides their footsteps.

“Yeah,” Kyle says. “He stayed for like five hours, but he was just in the big room. He said he heard creepy noises from all over the place. He left when he said there was a sound like there was someone else in here.”

“In where?” Awsten says.

“In this room. The storeroom,” Kyle says.

Awsten laughs nervously. “Great!”

And of course that’s the perfect moment for there to be a heavy noise from the other side of a large shelf. Awsten goes perfectly still.

Is that…

_breathing?_

“Kyle shut up,” he says, as his heart rate picks up. 

Kyle stops moving. Awsten strains to hear.

It’s breathing.

Something is breathing in here. Not just normal breathing, but heavy full-mouthed breathing. It’s not him, it’s not Kyle, and it’s absolutely coming from the other side of the shelves. Awsten’s going to fucking die.

“Get out! Get out!” Awsten yells, whirling around and nearly running headfirst into Kyle. 

Kyle steps back to avoid getting flattened and trips backwards over a pile of stuff on the floor. Awsten loses track of where he’s pointing with his flashlight so that he can grab Kyle, drag him to his feet, and haul him back to the door. They nearly trip and slide over the stuff on the floor on their mad escape. They’re causing the biggest ruckus so far— probably noisier than the crash from earlier— but all Awsten can imagine is some faceless horror following after them in the storeroom. 

He bursts out of the storeroom with Kyle right beside him. Awsten grabs the door from Jawn’s hands and slams it shut. 

“What happened?” Jawn says.

“I fucking heard something in there,” Awsten says. “We’re fucking leaving and fuck if I’m ever coming back to this hellhole.”

“What did you hear?” Kyle says. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I’ll tell you later,” Awsten says. He grabs Kyle and Jawn by the hands and starts pulling them back towards the door. He doesn’t want to take any chances by waiting and explaining things. If there really is something in there— ghost or something else— then he has no interest in waiting and letting it come out and get them.

“We didn’t get to the office,” Kyle says.

“Fuck the office,” Awsten says. “This place sucks. It’s haunted as shit.” 

Thankfully, Jawn and Kyle don’t complain anymore as they follow him out to the sidewalk. Awsten still doesn’t want to stop, so he hurries them back to their car, and makes Jawn drive as soon as they’re all in. It’s not until they’re five minutes away that he finally breathes a sigh of relief and starts to relax.

“What did you hear?” Kyle asks him again.

“I think it was a ghost,” Awsten says. “Either that, or someone was in there with us.”

 

~~~~

_Alex 3: oh fuck we finally got the distortion_

_Katie: this was so scary! The breathing at 14:00 right before the video goes staticy!! Im glad they got out alright_

_yellowroses: we’re archiving everything on the server if anyone has any insights. **here’s** the link again_

_sleepdeprived: fuck man thats sum seriously good editing cant wait to see wht happens next_

_I Spy Slenderman: oh this is pretty good already. nice scary location too_

_pringles127: yall shouldv stayed the night itd be tight_

_theark: watched all of your videos in the dark, this was the best one. Good job_

_Bill Cosmos: I don’t see a pattern with the distortion…_

_purplewasabi: this is my favorite video of yours so far! please do more at night!_

_Arachne00: I had to stop this partway through I was so scared when they were in the kitchen_

_Mortal Jason: oh I forgot about this series its getting good_

_peanutbutterbellytime: Im loving this_

_darkstar: this is some exciting development_

_IrishFish: what’s the song at the beginning_

_Danke Inferno: for anyone hiding in the comments, theres loud noises at 6:51 and 7:10 and the noise distortion is at 8:39 and 14:02_

_XxGlitterBonesxX: pleaze sleep te night here!!!_

_Geoff Games: Sorry about the video quality guys! I hope your camera gets fixed soon!_

_Mouse: you got ghosts guys_


End file.
